Francis Bacon

Above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.

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

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

A man ought warily to begin charges which once begun will continue.

Every rod or staff of empire is truly crooked at the top.

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

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

I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.

One of the fathers saith . . . that old men go to death, and death comes to young men.

There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death . . . Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.