Francis Bacon

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life — some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed — because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

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

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

It’s not whether you get knocked down, its whether you get back up.

Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.

The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.

There are charms made only for distance admiration.