Francis Bacon

The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.

There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.

A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

The arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.

The honest and just man is a perpetual censor.

A great kingdom is not to be made good by the multitude of people, but by the greatness of them that are in it.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and better discovereth God's favour.

For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar.

Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them.

Certainly, wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.

The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.

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

And it is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea.

For there is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

He that cannot dissemble, cannot reign.