Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint.
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He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry? 'A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.'
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The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.
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Wonder is the seed of knowledge.
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There is nothing more certain in nature than that it is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated.
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I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.
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We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to Nature the anticipation of Nature (as being rash and premature) and that which is properly deduced from things the interpretation of Nature.
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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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It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment.
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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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Again there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress; which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.
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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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Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature; but unskillfully and unmethodically depicted, it will be as it were an ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.