Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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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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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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The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes the wrong one.
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It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one.
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Time is the author of authors.
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Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.
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Wonder is the seed of knowledge.
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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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Friendship maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.
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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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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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Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.
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Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
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But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.
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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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It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.
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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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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.
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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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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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Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
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Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.