Francis Bacon

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

All good moral philosophy is but a handmaid to religion.

When any of the four pillars of government-religion, justice, counsel, and treasure-are mainly shaken or weakened, men had need to pray for fair weather.

Poesy was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.

We cannot command nature except by obeying her.

A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.

There was never miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to confess a God.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.