Francis Bacon Quotes
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The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.
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Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
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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 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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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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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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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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The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
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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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An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.
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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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The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
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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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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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Opportunity makes a thief.
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Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother.
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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.
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We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.
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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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Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
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Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.