Francis Bacon

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

A good conscience is a continual feast.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain – at least in a poor country like Russia – and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.