Francis Bacon

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth… and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.

It is a strange desire, to seek power and lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains, and it is sometimes base; and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing.

Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

We are prisoners of ideas.

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to put me in your will and you will see that (as long as I live at least) you will never even catch cold.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do what is right.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.