Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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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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The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness.
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Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
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God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.
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Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
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Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.
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It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
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Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
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Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.
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Let no one think or maintain that a person can search too far or be too well studied in either the book of God's word or the book of God's works.
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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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There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.
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Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.
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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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Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
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There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.
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Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?
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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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The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.
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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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Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret.