Francis Bacon Quotes
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If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.
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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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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.
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The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.
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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.
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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.
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The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
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Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
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Half of science is putting forth the right questions.
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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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Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother.
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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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The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.
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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.
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When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.
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Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
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The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.
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Every person born in the USA is endowed with life, liberty, and a substantial share of the national debt.
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Knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent, and therefore where it entereth into a man it makes him swell.
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For knowledge, too, is itself power.
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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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The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship.