Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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It is impossible to love and to be wise.
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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
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There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.
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God loveth the clean.
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Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
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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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We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
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You see, painting has now become, or all art has now become completely a game, by which man distracts himself. What is fascinating actually is, that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to become any good at all.
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There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
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Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.
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No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.
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Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, 'Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone'.
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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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There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.
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I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime.
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God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.
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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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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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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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Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.
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I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.
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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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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.