Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.
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For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
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The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
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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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We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.
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But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness.
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I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance.
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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.
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The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.
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One of the Seven [wise men of Greece] was wont to say: That laws were like cobwebs, where the small flies are caught and the great break through.
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In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.
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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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Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest.
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Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.
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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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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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By indignities men come to dignities.
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Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.
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But this is that which will dignify and exalt knowledge: if contemplation and action be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been: a conjunction like unto that of the highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.