Francis Bacon

“Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.”

“Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.”

“Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.”

“The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”

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

“The worst men often give the best advice.”

“Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.”

“Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.”

“Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel and more fit for new projects than for settled business.”

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

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

“Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.”

“Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.”

“Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes adversity not without many comforts and hopes.”

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

“God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.”

“God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.”

“Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.”

“God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.”

“Acorns were good until bread was found.”

“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”

“When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.”

“There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.”

“Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.”