Francis Bacon Quotes
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There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
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The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.
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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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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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A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.
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In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works we may very properly apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works; accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention.
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For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
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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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First the amendment of their own minds. For the removal of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind.
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Children sweeten labours. But they make misfortune more bitter. They increase the care of life. But they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts. But memory, merit and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see 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.
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My painting is not violent, it's life that is violent. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. 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.
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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.
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A cat will never drown if she sees the shore.
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Come home to men's business and bosoms.
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This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
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Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.
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I like, you may say, the glitter and colour that comes from the mouth, and I've always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.
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Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
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Jesus would have been one of the best photographers that ever existed. He was always looking at the beauty of people souls. In fact Jesus was constantly making pictures of God in people's life by looking at their souls and exposing them to his light.
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Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.
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He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
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He 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.
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The great atheists, indeed are hypocrites; which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end.
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Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.