Francis Bacon

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

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

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men’s manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Remember who you are.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

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

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

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

He is armed without who is innocent within, be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass.

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails – aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?