Francis Bacon Quotes
-
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
-
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.
-
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I don't think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck.
-
Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
-
All bravery stands upon comparisons.
-
I believe in deeply ordered chaos.
-
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.
-
Knowledge is power.
-
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
-
People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
-
If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.
-
Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?
-
Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
-
Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.
-
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.
-
Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
-
The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.
-
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.
-
Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.