Francis Bacon

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Science is but an image of the truth.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.

The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.

If you employed study, thinking, and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that can change the course of your destiny.

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

A woman is a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

It is not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

Refrain from asking what going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

America is another name for opportunity.

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.