Francis Bacon

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

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

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.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

The only wealth is life.

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.

I am the flame, electric blue, lightening, razor-like, renewing my spirit. Heart beating in time to the earth’s rhythm and expanse of black ink sky, overreaching eternal. My fingertips spark with seeds of creation, fireworks coloring canvas, beckoned by this light that lifts me.

I’ve learned that from my husband, that sort of, you know, ability to not get too high or too low with changes and bumps in the road.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

No matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

Not to be provok’d is best: But if mov’d, never correct till the Fume is spent; For every Stroke our Fury strikes, is sure to hit our selves at last.

I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.