Francis Bacon

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

The honest and straightforward course is, in the long run, the most profitable.

It is a strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.

For the mind is not a tabula rasa upon which impressions are made, but rather a wax tablet upon which impressions are made, and which retains them for a time.

In studies, whatsoever a man learneth, he must learn it as if he were to teach it.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

The true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers.

For the sense is a thing infirm and erring, and the mind is a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.

The mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.

For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

Money is a great servant but a bad master.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Friends are thieves of time.

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.