Francis Bacon Quotes
Most popular Francis Bacon Quotes
Knowledge is power.
Age will not be defied.
Knowledge itself is power.
In charity there is no excess.
To choose time is to save time.
Time is the greatest innovator.
Silence is the virtue of fools.
Time is the measure of business.
Nature is commanded by obeying her.
For also knowledge itself is power.
By indignities men come to dignities.
Time, . . . is the author of authors.
It is impossible to love and to be wise.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
A prudent question is one half of wisdom.
The place of justice is a hallowed place.
No man is angry that feels not himself hurt.
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
Perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge.
I would live to study, and not study to live.
Truth is the daughter of time, not authority.
Virtue is a like a rich stone, best plain set.
There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
We cannot command nature except by obeying her.
All rising to great place is by a winding stair.
Critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.
Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Men prefer to believe what they prefer to be true.
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
The wise will make more opportunities than they find
Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others.
Truth emerges more readily from error than confusion.
Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Time is the measure of business, as money is of wares.
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall.
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.
Books are ships which pass through the vast seas of time.
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
The art of invention grows young with the things invented.
Boldly sound your own praises, and some of them will stick.
Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
Children sweeten labors; but they make misfortunes more bitter.
A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures.
Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.
They that reverence too much old times are but a scorn to the new.
For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.
The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.
Nothing doth more hurt in state than that cunning men pass for wise.
There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
Never any knowledge was delivered in the same manner it was invented.
The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.
What is truth? Said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study.
Human nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
One who is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time.
The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs.
Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last.
A healthy body is a guest-chamber for the soul; a sick body is a prison.
Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us.
In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.
It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth.
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon.
Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when that faileth, he groweth out of use.
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve.
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
Here is a test to see if your mission on earth is finished. If you are alive, it isn't.
People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
A sudden, bold, and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.
It is said of untrue valors, that some men's valors are in the eyes of them that look on.
Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with, will make you lose your way.
It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.
Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Science is the labor and handicraft of the mind; poetry can only be considered its recreation.
Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt; when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if one mark them well, are but Essays—that is dispersed meditations.
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.
The folly of one man is the fortune of another; for no man prospers so suddenly as by others' errors.
All our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.
There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infanct, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
Knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent, and therefore where it entereth into a man it makes him swell.
Money is like manure, it's not worth anything unless you spread it around to help young beautiful things grow.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.
Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
Philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied, or are not much wanted.
Men in great places are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.
Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences; whence it is bad in council though good in execution.
Nothing destroys authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power, pressed too far and relaxed too much.
Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason.
For as your majesty saith most aptly and elegantly, "As the tongue speaketh to the ear so the gesture speaketh to the eye."
The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.
Let the mind be enlarged... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind.
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.
Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.
This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.
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.
If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin in doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, fitter for new projects than for settled business.
Logic and rhetoric make men able to contend. Logic differeth from rhetoric as the fist from the palm; the one close, the other at large.
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.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
There are three things which make a nation great and prosperous-a fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy conveyance for men and commodities.
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
When ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection.
We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream, and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death.
Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to one with whom we deal with is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.
The punishment of wits enhances their authority, and a forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.
Nor do apothegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use: as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knot of business and affairs.
There are three parts in truth: first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it.
For strength of nature in youth passeth over many excesses, which are owing a man till his age. Discern the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.
A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return.
Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning, and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and, lastly, his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.
It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth...and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with will make you lose your way.
The folly of one man is the fortune of another. For no man prospers so suddenly as by others' errors.
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.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.
