Francis Bacon

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

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

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

There are those that are void of all mercy, but when it comes the time that they are on their knees, they plead for it. Those that were born with the art of deception, never sincere with their words or actions. But mercy is not theirs to take, only for you to give. Never compromise your standards, your beliefs and become like the ones who you are fighting against, but stay resolute to who you are.

The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.

I’ll tell you why yes, because why people lie is, because when people stop lying you know they’ve stopped caring.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.

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

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.