Francis Bacon

If money be not they servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.

A sudden bold and unexpected question does many times surprise a man and lay him open.

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

For knowledge itself is power.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

God almighty first planted a garden: and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasure.

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

As a child I used to read Gone with the Wind over and over again. I wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara. I never wanted to believe that it was possible that there could be infidelity. I never wanted to be believe that it was even possible for a man to look another way, even for a moment. My bubble of monogamy was pierced in a harsh way.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Classic – A book which people praise and don’t read.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.

I love books.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.