Francis Bacon Quotes
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The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success.
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Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
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Opportunity makes a thief.
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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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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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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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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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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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The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
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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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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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An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.
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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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Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
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It is impossible to love and to be wise.
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The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.
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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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The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
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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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We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.
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We only have our nervous system to paint.
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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.