Francis Bacon Quotes
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For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.
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One of the fathers saith . . . that old men go to death, and death comes to young men.
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A lie faces God and shrinks from man.
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I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
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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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The winning of honor, is but the revealing of a man's virtue and worth, without disadvantage.
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Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still he was never a whit abashed, but said, 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.'
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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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He who desires solitude is either an animal or a god.
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Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.
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Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
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Deformed persons are commonly even with nature; for as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature; being for the most part (as the Scripture saith) void of natural affection; and so they have their revenge of nature.
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The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness.
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Nothing is to be feared but fear.
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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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But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.
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When any of the four pillars of government-religion, justice, counsel, and treasure-are mainly shaken or weakened, men had need to pray for fair weather.
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Nevertheless if any skillful Servant of Nature shall bring force to bear on matter, and shall vex it and drive it to extremities as if with the purpose of reducing it to nothing, then will matter (since annihilation or true destruction is not possible except by the omnipotence of God) finding itself in these straits, turn and transform itself into strange shapes, passing from one change to another till it has gone through the whole circle and finished the period.
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Gardening is the purest of human pleasures.
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Doctor Johnson said, that in sickness there were three things that were material; the physician, the disease, and the patient: and if any two of these joined, then they get the victory; for, Ne Hercules quidem contra duos [Not even Hercules himself is a match for two]. If the physician and the patient join, then down goes the disease; for then the patient recovers: if the physician and the disease join, that is a strong disease; and the physician mistaking the cure, then down goes the patient: if the patient and the disease join, then down goes the physician; for he is discredited.
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Ne mireris, si vulgus verius loquatur quam honoratiores; quia etiam tutius loquitur.
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It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
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All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.
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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.