Francis Bacon

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Science is but an image of the truth.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.