Francis Bacon Quotes
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They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
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Spouses are great impediments to great enterprises.
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Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.
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Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
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Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.
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Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.
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A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made.
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The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.
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The essential form of knowledge... is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.
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All will come out in the washing.
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Riches are for spending.
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Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
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Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.
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It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
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Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
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Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.
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Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
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It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.
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Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
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I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.
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There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.
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The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse.
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Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
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Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.