Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.
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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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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.
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Those herbs which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but, being trodden upon and crushed, are three; that is, burnet, wild thyme and watermints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.
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Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.
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I believe in deeply ordered chaos.
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Knowledge is power.
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Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
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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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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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God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
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Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
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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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The universe must not be narrowed down to the limit of our understanding, but our understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered.
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Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.
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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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Men in great place are thrice servants,-servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.
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Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
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The master of superstition, is the people; and in all superstition, wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.
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Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
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Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
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It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.