Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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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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Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
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Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.
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People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
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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.
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To spend too much time in studies is sloth.
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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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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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Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
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The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.
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Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
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I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
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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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I believe in deeply ordered chaos.
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The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
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There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
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We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
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All bravery stands upon comparisons.
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If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the well-being of Church and State.
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Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
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Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
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The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery at first it deceives, at last it betrays.
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Rebellions of the belly are the worst.