Francis Bacon Quotes
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Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees.
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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.
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An illustrational form tells you through the intelligence immediately what the form is about, whereas a non-illustrational form works first upon sensation and then slowly leaks back into the fact.
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A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.
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Sir Henry Wotton used to say that critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.
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The obliteration of the evil hath been practised by two means, some kind of redemption or expiation of that which is past, and an inception or account de novo for the time to come. But this part seemeth sacred and religious, and justly; for all good moral philosophy (as was said) is but a handmaid to religion.
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Lucid intervals and happy pauses.
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The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.
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Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.
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Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
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Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.
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Half of science is putting forth the right questions.
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The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.
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For knowledge, too, is itself power.
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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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The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.
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The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success.
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If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.
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... wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.
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Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
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That which above all other yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet.
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Whatever you can, count.
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Boldness is a child of ignorance.
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For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.