Francis Bacon

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

Knowledge is power.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.