Francis Bacon

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Science is but an image of the truth.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.

To choose time is to save time.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.

Excellence must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might and every bit of effort that we have each day there’s a new encounter, each week is a new challenge.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

He’s a man of great common sense and good taste – meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.