Francis Bacon Quotes
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In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.
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The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected.
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I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.
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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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There was never miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to confess a God.
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I've had photographs taken for portraits because I very much prefer working from the photographs than from models... I couldn't attempt to do a portrait from photographs of somebody I didn't know.
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If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.
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So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.
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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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For fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pools mar all, and make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs.
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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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Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.
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We only have our nervous system to paint.
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When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.
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Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.
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Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
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Boldness is a child of ignorance.
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Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.
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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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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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Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection.
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The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.
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The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.
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For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes.