Francis Bacon

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.

For knowledge itself is power.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

The more experiments you make the better.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

In the end, people will judge you anyway, so don’t live our life impressing other – live your life impressing yourself.

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.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

Pity is for living, envy is for dead.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.