Francis Bacon Quotes
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Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.
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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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No man's fortune can be an end worthy of his being.
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Friendship maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.
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But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.
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The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.
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To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.
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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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Time is the author of authors.
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Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
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Let every student of nature take this as his rule, that whatever the mind seizes upon with particular satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.
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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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Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
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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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It was a high speech of Seneca that "The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired."
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...neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science.
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Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
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A man cannot speak to his son, but as a father; to his wife, but as a husband; to his enemy, but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak, as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person.
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The planting of hemp and flax would be an unknown advantage to the kingdom, many places therein being as apt for it , as any foreing parts.
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It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.
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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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Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.
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Another argument of hope may be drawn from this-that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.
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The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses: the one, that it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods; when that which is not fully appearing is not collected into assertion, whereby error might draw error, but reserved in doubt: the other, that the entry of doubts are as so many suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that which, if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have advised, but passed it over without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts, is made to be attended and applied.