Francis Bacon Quotes
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Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
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The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse.
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The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
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I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.
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Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
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Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
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It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.
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A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
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States as great engines move slowly.
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The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
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Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb; Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch, Till the white-wing'd reapers come.
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The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.
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As is the garden such is the gardener. A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds.
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Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
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It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.
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Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.
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Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
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Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.
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I believe in deeply ordered chaos.
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People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
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I don't think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck.
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The world's a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.
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Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi. The age of antiquity is the youth of the world. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.
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If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the well-being of Church and State.