Francis Bacon Quotes
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But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.
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I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.
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The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.
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The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
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The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
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A good conscience is a continual feast.
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Opportunity makes a thief.
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Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother.
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'You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God' This canon is the mother of all canons against heresy; the causes of error are two; the ignorance of the will of God, and the ignorance or not sufficient consideration of his power.
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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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An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.
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We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.
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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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Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
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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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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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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 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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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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For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.
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Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
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Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.
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...to invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know.
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Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people`s plates.