Francis Bacon Quotes
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Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
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There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him.
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In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.
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A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.
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I'm just trying to make images as accurately as possible off my nervous system as I can.
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Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.
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Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life.
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Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
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Money is like muck, not good unless spread.
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Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are are only good intellectual tools.
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If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.
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Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.
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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.
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We must see whether the same clock with weights will go faster at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; it is probable, if the pull of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine, that the earth has real attraction.
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A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
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There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
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Out of monuments, names, words proverbs ...and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.
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When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others.
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God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
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Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.
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Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.
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There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
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But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
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Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.