Francis Bacon Quotes
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By far the best proof is experience.
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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.
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I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.
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Vices of the time; vices of the man.
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Laws and Institutions Must Go Hand in Hand with the Progress of the Human Mind.
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I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime.
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No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years before the thing begins to sort itself out.
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Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
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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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A lie faces God and shrinks from man.
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There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.
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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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If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master.
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Take an arrow, and hold it in flame for the space of ten pulses, and when it cometh forth you shall find those parts of the arrow which were on the outsides of the flame more burned, blacked, and turned almost to coal, whereas the midst of the flame will be as if the fire had scarce touched it. This is an instance of great consequence for the discovery of the nature of flame; and sheweth manifestly, that flame burneth more violently towards the sides than in the midst.
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The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.
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Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.
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By indignities men come to dignities.
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There was never miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to confess a God.
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The first question concerning the Celestial Bodies is whether there be a system, that is whether the world or universe compose together one globe, with a center, or whether the particular globes of earth and stars be scattered dispersedly, each on its own roots, without any system or common center.
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I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance.
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Reading maketh a full man.
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Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.
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Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
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Cure the disease and kill the patient.