Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance.
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Praise is the reflection of virtue.
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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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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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... wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.
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To say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men.
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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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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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The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship.
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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.
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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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It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.
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The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.
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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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We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.
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When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting.
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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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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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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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Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
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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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A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.
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The voice of the people has about it something divine: for how otherwise can so many heads agree together as one?