Francis Bacon Quotes
-
In things that a man would not be seen in himself, it is a point of cunning to borrow the name of the world; as to say, 'The world says,' or 'There is a speech abroad.'
-
Half of science is putting forth the right questions.
-
We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.
-
If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.
-
By indignities men come to dignities.
-
Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils.
-
Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.
-
The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.
-
I feel that I am much freer if I'm on my own, but I'm sure that there are a lot of painters who would perhaps be even more inventive if they had people round them... I find that if I am on my own I can allow the paint to dictate to me. So the images that I'm putting down on the canvas dictate the thing to me and it gradually builds up and comes along.
-
For knowledge, too, is itself power.
-
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.
-
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
-
In revenge a man is but even with his enemy; for it is a princely thing to pardon, and Solomon saith it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression.
-
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.
-
Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
-
Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.
-
The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
-
There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.
-
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.
-
To say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men.
-
If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master.