Francis Bacon Quotes
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There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
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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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For a man to love again where he is loved, it is the charity of publicans contracted by mutual profit and good offices; but to love a man's enemies is one of the cunningest points of the law of Christ, and an imitation of the divine nature.
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In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.
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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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A good conscience is a continual feast.
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A lie faces God and shrinks from man.
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No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
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Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
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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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For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes.
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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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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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Time is the greatest innovator.
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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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A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
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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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He that defers his charity 'till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.
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If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.
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In revenge a man is but even with his enemy; for it is a princely thing to pardon, and Solomon saith it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression.
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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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The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes; and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.
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It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
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Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.