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Riches are a good handmaiden, but the worst mistress.

— Francis Bacon

Divitiae bona ancilla, pessima domina.

Original text (Latin)

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More quotes by Francis Bacon

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

The Advancement of Learning (1605)

But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

The Advancement of Learning (1605)

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.

The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.

Novum Organum (1620)

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

Essex's Device (1595)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.

Gautama Buddha

Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.

Jerome The Cry for Justice (1915)

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Max Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Francis Bacon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.