Francis Bacon

“Anger is certainly a kind of baseness, as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns: children, women, old folks, sick folks.”

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

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

“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.”

“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.”

“The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.”

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

“I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.”

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

“The worst men often give the best advice.”

“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”

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

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

“People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.”

“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.”

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

“Knowledge and human power are synonymous.”

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

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”

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

“Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.”