Francis Bacon Quotes
-
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
-
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
-
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.
-
There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.
-
Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.
-
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.
-
The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.
-
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.
-
Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.
-
Innovations, which are the births of time.
-
Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.
-
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.
-
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
-
Riches are for spending.
-
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.
-
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.
-
A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.
-
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.
-
Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
-
Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
-
Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.
-
It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
-
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
-
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.