Francis Bacon Quotes
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Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
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There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names - calling the first class, Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.
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The remedy is worse than the disease.
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Medical men do not know the drugs they use, nor their prices.
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The essential form of knowledge... is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.
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Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.
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Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.
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It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
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There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.
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What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
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He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age.
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Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
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I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.
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Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
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Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
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If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
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Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.
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Virtue is like precious odors - most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
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Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
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Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
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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.
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To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affection; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar.
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It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.
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Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.