Francis Bacon Quotes
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The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.
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It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.
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A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.
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The essential form of knowledge... is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.
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It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
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If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted.
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Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
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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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Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?
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But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.
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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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Riches are for spending.
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To spend too much time in studies is sloth.
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Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.
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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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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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Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
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If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.
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Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
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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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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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Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
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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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All bravery stands upon comparisons.