The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.
Francis BaconThe bee enclosed and through the amber shown Seems buried in the juice which was his own.
Francis BaconNothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.
Francis BaconMen suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason
Francis BaconIn every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.
Francis BaconThe human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.
Francis BaconBelieving that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.
Francis BaconMahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled: Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.'
Francis BaconThat conceit, elegantly expressed by the Emperor Charles V., in his instructions to the King, his son, "that fortune hath somewhat the nature of a woman, that if she be too much wooed she is the farther off.
Francis BaconIt is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
Francis BaconThe dignity of this end of endowment of man's life with new commodity appeareth by the estimation that antiquity made of such as guided thereunto ; for whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpators of tyrants, fathers of the people, were honoured but with the titles of demigods, inventors ere ever consecrated among the gods themselves.
Francis BaconBut we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness.
Francis BaconHe that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.
Francis BaconGood fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
Francis BaconThe Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it....It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man.
Francis BaconWe read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
Francis BaconIt cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.
Francis BaconThe 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.
Francis BaconThe greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.
Francis BaconGod has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
Francis BaconWhen a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.
Francis BaconIf a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Francis BaconThere is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.
Francis BaconHe that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis BaconBut I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.
Francis BaconIt is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
Francis BaconA man cannot speak to his son, but as a father; to his wife, but as a husband; to his enemy, but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak, as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person.
Francis Bacon