Francis Bacon

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men’s manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence – neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish – it is an imponderably valuable gift.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch but envy.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.

The only way to know is to live, learn, and grow.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.