Francis Bacon

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Life is a progress, and not a station.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness – calling their denial knowledge.

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.

I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

You know you’re a success when you look at your kids and realize they turned out better than you.

The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.

It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good – and less trouble!

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character, putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support, it is worse than a large family, he is the silent poor indeed.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

We have a problem. Congratulations. But it’s a tough problem. Then double congratulations.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.