Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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I'm working for myself; what else have I got to work for? How can you work for an audience? What do you imagine an audience would want? I have got nobody to excite except myself, so I am always surprised if anyone likes my work sometimes. I suppose I'm very lucky, of course, to be able to earn my living by something that really absorbs me to try to do, if that is what you call luck.
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For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes.
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Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
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Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
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Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees.
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And as for Mixed Mathematics, I may only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them, as nature grows further disclosed.
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A good name is like precious ointment ; it filleth all round about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.
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There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.
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Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.
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There is no doubt but men of genius and leisure may carry our method to greater perfection, but, having had long experience, we have found none equal to it for the commodiousness it affords in working with the Understanding.
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Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
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A good conscience is a continual feast.
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The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
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I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.
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Fortune makes him fool, whom she makes her darling.
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Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.
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We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.
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When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
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We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.
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For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
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So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.
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The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
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Ipsa scientia potestas est. (Knowledge itself is power.)