1. “Acorns were good until bread was found.”
2. “A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.”
3. “All rising to a great place is by a winding stair."
4. "A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green."
5. “And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.”
6. “A prudent question is one half of wisdom.”
7. “A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
8. "Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books."
9. “But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.”
10. “Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.”
11. “For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”
12. “For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.”
13. “For it is esteemed a kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to inquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical, except they be such as may be thought secrets, rarities, and special subtilities, which humour of vain supercilious arrogancy is justly derided in Plato... But the truth is, they be not the highest instances that give the securest information; as may well be expressed in the tale... of the philosopher, that while he gazed upwards to the stars fell into the water; for if he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the stars. So it cometh often to pass, that mean and small things discover great, better than great can discover the small.”
14. “For what a man would like to to be true, that he more readily believes.”
15. “Friendship redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.”
16. "He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator."
17. “Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.”
18. “I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.”
19. "If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world."
20. ”If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.”
21. “I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.”
22. “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.”
23. “If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.”
24. “It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth . . . and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.”
25. "It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one."
26. ”It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear; and yet that commonly is the case of kings.”
27. ”It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.”
28. "It is impossible to love and to be wise."
29. “It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.”
30. "Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is."
31. “I would live to study, and not study to live.”
32. “Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.”
33. “Knowledge and human power are synonymous.”
34. "Knowledge itself is power."
35. “Libraries are the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.”
36. “Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him ... when the hill stood still, he was never a wit abashed, but said, 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.'”
37. “Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
38. “Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.”
39. ”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.”
40. “Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.”
41. “Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.”
42. “Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.”
43. “No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.”
44. “Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.”
45. “One of the Seven was wont to say: "That laws were like cobwebs; where the small flies were caught, and the great brake through."”
46. “Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.”
47. “Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”
48. “Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.”
49. “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
50. “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”
51. “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”
52. “Silence is the virtue of fools.”
53. “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. Some books may also be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others.”
54. “Testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow; the force of it depends on the strength of the hand that draws it. Argument is like an arrow from a cross-bow, which has equal force though shot by a child.”
55. ”The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”
56. “The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.”
57. “The folly of one man is the fortune of another.”
58. “The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.”
59. “There are three parts in truth: first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it.”
60. “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
61. “There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.”
62. “The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.”
63. “The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man less than a span:In his conception wretched, from the womb so to the tomb.Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years with cares and fears.Who then to frail mortality shall trust,But limns the water, or but writes in dust.”
64. “The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.”
65. ”They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”
66. ”They do best who, if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarter, and sever it wholly from their serious affairs and actions of life; for if it check once with business it troubleth men's fortunes, and maketh men that they can no ways be true to their own ends.”
67. "To choose time is to save time."
68. “Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.”
69. ”Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.”
