Francis Bacon Quotes

Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise. For the distance is altered, and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.

Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

The only hope [of science] ... is in genuine induction.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!

Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.

All will come out in the washing.

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.

The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery at first it deceives, at last it betrays

I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him. If I do grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.

A man were better relate himself to a statue or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

A cat will never drown if she sees the shore.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.

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.

The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet it either does not observe them or it despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.

Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii: when industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

Let every student of nature take this as his rule, that whatever the mind seizes upon with particular satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little, and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not keep their suspicions in smother.

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.

But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.

What, then, remains but that we still should cry, For being born, and, being born, to die?

And as for Mixed Mathematics, I may only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them, as nature grows further disclosed.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made.

A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb; Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch, Till the white-wing'd reapers come.

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.

It is rightly laid down that 'true knowledge is knowledge by causes'. Also the establishment of four causes is not bad: material, formal, efficient and final.

All artists are vain, they long to be recognized and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at the same time they want to be free. But nobody is free.

...those experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give more light to the invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner's needle, which giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails, which give the motion.

It was well said that envy keeps no holidays.

Dreams, and predictions of astrology....ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.