Francis Bacon

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

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

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

God almighty first planted a garden: and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasure.

For knowledge itself is power.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

Remember, when life’s path is steep, to keep your mind even.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

Energy doesn’t lie so trust those vibes you’re getting.