Francis Bacon

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

The disciplined are free.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

The only wealth is life.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

If a man’s fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Woman is a ray of God. She is not that earthly beloved: she is creative, not created.

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn.