Francis Bacon

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

A sudden bold and unexpected question does many times surprise a man and lay him open.

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

We live by our imagination, our admirations, and our sentiments.

Broken, like a mosaic, I am pieced together. I am still a piece of art, though I may not be fully appreciated by all, the ones that see the beauty, are the ones who have the understanding; gained through experience, that to break, doesn’t mean to give up.

The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it… Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

The education of the will is the object of our existence.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.