Francis Bacon

It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Opportunity makes a thief.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

The worst sin… is… to be indifferent.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

A perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

The way to do well is to do well.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.