Francis Bacon Quotes
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The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship.
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Praise is the reflection of virtue.
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If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.
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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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Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest.
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You shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves?
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I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him. If I do grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.
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Cure the disease and kill the patient.
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I've had photographs taken for portraits because I very much prefer working from the photographs than from models... I couldn't attempt to do a portrait from photographs of somebody I didn't know.
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Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
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If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs.
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Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.
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For the inquisition of Final Causes is barren, and like a virgin consecrated to God produces nothing.
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No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
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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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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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Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
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Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.
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Be true to thyself, as thou be not false to others.
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Beware of sudden change, in any great point of diet, and, if necessity inforce it, fit the rest to it. For it is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things, than one.
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The errors of young men are the ruin of business, but the errors of aged men amount to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.
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In charity there is no excess.
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To seek to extinguish anger utterly, is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined, both in race and in time.
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Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.