Francis Bacon Quotes
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A good name is like a precious ointment; it filleth all around about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.
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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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Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that '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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Science is but an image of the truth.
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That which above all other yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet.
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The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance - if it is not irrational, you make illustration.
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Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.
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If any human being earnestly desire to push on to new discoveries instead of just retaining and using the old; to win victories over Nature as a worker rather than over hostile critics as a disputant; to attain, in fact, clear and demonstrative knowlegde instead of attractive and probable theory; we invite him as a true son of Science to join our ranks.
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Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.
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I want to make portraits and images. I don't know how. Out of despair, I just use paint anyway. Suddenly the things you make coagulate and take on just the shape you intend. Totally accurate marks, which are outside representational marks.
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An illustrational form tells you through the intelligence immediately what the form is about, whereas a non-illustrational form works first upon sensation and then slowly leaks back into the fact.
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The obliteration of the evil hath been practised by two means, some kind of redemption or expiation of that which is past, and an inception or account de novo for the time to come. But this part seemeth sacred and religious, and justly; for all good moral philosophy (as was said) is but a handmaid to religion.
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Nothing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men out of the Church, as breach of unity.
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There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.
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The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
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When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.
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If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.
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Wise sayings are not only for ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby knots in business are pierced and discovered.
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Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.
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The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.
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As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.
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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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Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
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I feel that I am much freer if I'm on my own, but I'm sure that there are a lot of painters who would perhaps be even more inventive if they had people round them... I find that if I am on my own I can allow the paint to dictate to me. So the images that I'm putting down on the canvas dictate the thing to me and it gradually builds up and comes along.