Francis Bacon

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

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

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

Knowledge is power.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

In his private heart no man much respects himself.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.