Francis Bacon

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

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 with tales, so is the other.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

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

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Language is the dress of thought.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.