The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning, it far surpasseth all other in nature

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds

There are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges

Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

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

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

He said it, that knew it best.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other

In civil business; what first? Boldness; what second, and third? Boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy...

The four pillars of government . . . (which are religion, justice, counsel, and treasure).

Poesy was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind.

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

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of...

Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, “”It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be

Age will not be defied.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

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

The surest way to prevent seditions…is to take away the matter of them.

Money is a good servant, a dangerous master.

All colors will agree in the dark.

Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority

It hath been an opinion that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and man

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint

To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.

The world ‘s a bubble, and the life of man less than a span.

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against...

Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature; but unskillfully and unmethodically depicted, it will be as it were an ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily...

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and...

A man is but what he knoweth.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

In charity there is no excess.

In counsel it is good to see dangers; but in execution not to see them unless they be very great

Certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he groweth out of use

There be that can pack the cards, and yet cannot play well.

It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

No man’s fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection

It is natural to die as to be born.

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

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

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time....

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

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.