Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
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Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.
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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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A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
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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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Ipsa scientia potestas est. (Knowledge itself is power.)
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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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We only have our nervous system to paint.
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Certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
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Half of science is putting forth the right questions.
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The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
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The great atheists, indeed are hypocrites; which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end.
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For knowledge, too, is itself power.
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It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.
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Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother.
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If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.
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Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.
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There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him.
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But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness.
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Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
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Judges ought to be more learned, than witty, more reverend, than plausible, and more advised, than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.
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There was a young man in Rome that was very like Augustus Caesar; Augustus took knowledge of it and sent for the man, and asked him "Was your mother never at Rome?" He answered "No Sir; but my father was."