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A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

By far the best proof is experience.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many.

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

I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

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.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.

Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.

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

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

Sir Francis Bacon, "Of Beauty"

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.

Sir Francis Bacon, "Of Death"

Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.

Sir Francis Bacon, Essays: Of Building, 1623

Knowledge is power.

(Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est)

Sir Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacræ. De Hæresibus. (1597)

In charity there is no excess.

Sir Francis Bacon, Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature (1625)

Knowledge is power.

Sir Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations, Of Heresies, 1597