Francis Bacon

If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

The rain comes and what bends will rise. It is a purposeful journey.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

To choose time is to save time.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time; a tremendous whack.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Nothing is real.

My love for you was like a poem I wrote; one that I disregarded as average. Torn out, thrown away to the rubbish heap, waiting; wishing to be picked up and appreciated by someone else, for the masterpiece that it is.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.