Francis Bacon Quotes
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Defer not charities till death; for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own.
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There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.
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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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Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.
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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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Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?
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Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
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My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is the double of that which is.
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Silence is the virtue of fools.
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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.
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A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
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The way of fortune is like the milky way in the sky; which is a meeting, or knot, of a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together : so are there a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
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It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
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A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.
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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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Of all the things in nature, the formation and endowment of man was singled out by the ancients.
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Money is a great servant but a bad master.
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It is natural to die as to be born.
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It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.
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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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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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Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
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Come home to men's business and bosoms.
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Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.