Francis Bacon

To choose time is to save time.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

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.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

By indignities men come to dignities.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

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

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Believe that each day that shines on you is your last.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.

Woman is a ray of God. She is not that earthly beloved: she is creative, not created.