Francis Bacon Quotes
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There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
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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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The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
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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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Nor is mine a trumpet which summons and excites men to cut each other to pieces with mutual contradictions, or to quarrel and fight with one another; but rather to make peace between themselves, and turning with united forces against the Nature of Things.
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I don't believe art is available; it's rare and curious and should be completely isolated; one is more aware of its magic the more it is isolated.
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Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
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A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.
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There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.
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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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The only hope [of science] ... is in genuine induction.
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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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He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
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The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
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If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.
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Perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.
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All artists are vain, they long to be recognized and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at the same time they want to be free. But nobody is free.
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Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.
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A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
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It's not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.
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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.
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Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
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I have to hope that my instincts will do the right thing, because I can't erase what I have done. And if I drew something first, then my paintings would be illustrations of drawings.
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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 in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.