Francis Bacon

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Be not penny-wise. Riches have wings. Sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

As Puppets are to Men, and Babies to Children, so is Man’s Workmanship to God’s: We are the Picture, he the Reality.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

The disciplined are free.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.