Francis Bacon

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

No man’s fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

If we live truly, we shall see truly.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Property is organized robbery.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Once you truly understand that it is okay to lose or fail, you are free, you have nothing to fear, and only then, can nothing in this world hold you back.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answer.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

My favorite nightcap, after all this time, is still the cocktail of you.

Beauty without expression is boring.