Francis Bacon Quotes
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Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
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Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights.
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Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.
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All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.
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Intermingle...jest with earnest.
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In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.
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Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.
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... wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.
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It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
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It was well said that envy keeps no holidays.
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The partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch not in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs.
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Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly.
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There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.
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In mathematics I can report no deficiency, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of Pure Mathematics.
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States are great engines moving slowly.
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For first of all we must prepare a Natural and Experimental History, sufficient and good; and this is the foundation of all; for we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.
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It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, 'It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.'
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It has well been said that the arch-flatterer, with whom all petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.
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Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason.
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It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.
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Parents who wish to train up their children in the way they should go must go in the way in which they would have their children go.
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Another error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
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As you work, the mood grows on you. There are certain images which suddenly get hold of me and I really want to do them. But it's true to say that the excitement and possibilities are in the working and obviously can only come in the working.
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I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.