Francis Bacon

assuredly the secret man heareth many confessions

but what is true of the details (and many of them) is true of the design

When the world was young it begat more children, but now it is old, it begets fewer

The lowest virtues draw praise from them; the middle virtues work in them astonishment or admiration; but of the highest virtues they have no sense or perceiving at all.

Nomen bonum instar unguenti fragrantis

impudent flatterer, look wherein a man is conscious to himself that he is most defective and is most out of countenance in himself,6 that will the flatterer entitle him to perforce

pessimum genus inimicorum laudantium

Ulysses, Vetulam suam praetulit immortalitati

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested

for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation.