Francis Bacon

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.

Anger makes dull men witty – but it keeps them poor.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

Our best history is still poetry.

We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.