Francis Bacon

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.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

No man’s fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est (Knowledge Itself Is Power)

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

When the desire ain’t on me I don’t need help. When it is on me I don’t want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn’t do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody’s.

Part of her mystery is how she is calm in the storm and anxious in the quiet.

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.

I want to be free; to escape. I use my pen as oars; the paper as my boat. I fill these pages to keep me afloat. I ride the waves of turmoil, so I can paddle away to calmer seas.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

When one has tasted it Watermelon he knows what the angels eat.

The less government we have the better.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.