Francis Bacon

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Friends are thieves of time.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

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

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman – repose in energy.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.

Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to carry it off.

We run to win, not just to be in the race.

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

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

We must substitute courage for caution.

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.

Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking.

The most beautiful woman is the one who is never divulging, she knows what she is and everything else is worth her.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.