Francis Bacon Quotes
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This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
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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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It is natural to die as to be born.
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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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They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art.
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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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Great changes are easier than small ones.
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Friends are thieves of time.
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Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
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I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.
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There are many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.
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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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A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.
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Come home to men's business and bosoms.
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The greatest trust, between man and man, is the trust of giving counsel. For in other confidences, men commit the parts of life; their lands, their goods, their children, their credit, some particular affair; but to such as they make their counsellors, they commit the whole: by how much the more, they are obliged to all faith and integrity.
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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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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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The only hope [of science] ... is in genuine induction.
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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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There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
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Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.
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The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men is the vicissitude of sects and religions.
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If I go to the National Gallery and I look at one of the great paintings that excite me there, it's not so much the painting that excites me as that the painting unlocks all kinds of valves of sensation within me which return me to life more violently.
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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.