Francis Bacon

Dissimulations is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit, and a strong heart, to know when to tell truth, and to do it. Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics, that are the great dissemblers.

The same is the case of men, that rise after calamities and misfortunes. For they are as men fallen out with the times; and think other men's harms, a redemption of their own sufferings.

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

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

I do now publish my Essays, which, of all my other works, have been most current; for that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and bosoms. I have enlarged them both in number and weight; so that they are indeed a new work.

Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights.

He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed, and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolors of death.

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.

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.

Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there is sometimes mixture of vanity, and of superstition.