Francis Bacon Quotes
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Innovations, which are the births of time.
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Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow.
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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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Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
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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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All will come out in the washing.
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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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Riches are for spending.
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Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.
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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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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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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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Spouses are great impediments to great enterprises.
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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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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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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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Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
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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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If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted.
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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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It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.
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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.
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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.