Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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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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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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The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand.
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Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
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Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
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There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.
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He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.
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There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
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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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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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Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.
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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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Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.
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Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
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The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
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For fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pools mar all, and make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs.
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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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Such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener.
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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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There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.
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Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
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Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.
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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.