Francis Bacon

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

People of great position are servants times three, servants of their country, servants of fame, and servants of business.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

The most difficult We do not deal in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.

And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

Man is God’s highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.