A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
— Francis Bacon
Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
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.
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
Friends are thieves of time.
It is impossible to love and to be wise.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.
The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.
He that hath knowledge spareth his words.
The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
Knowledge is power.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
