Francis Bacon

It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!

A good conscience is a continual feast.

Opportunity makes a thief.

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.

Friendship . . . is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.

Work is always an antidote to depression.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Whether he knew it or not, the life he lived was his penance. Punishing himself, for what he believes are his sins. Consciously or subconsciously, he creates the world he lives in. Never believing that he is deserving happiness, deserving joy. His self-destructive nature, in his eyes, and his eyes only, is justified. Everyone is deserving absolution, but he needs to understand, that he is the only one able to forgive himself.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.