Francis Bacon

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

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

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

Give, even if you only have little.

How many are the things I can do without!

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it.

To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity.

Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gongthese are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just, Pious and Devout Souls, are everywhere of one religion; and when Death has taken off the Mask, they will know one another, though the divers Liveries they wear here make them Strangers.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

The future is purchased by the present.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.