Francis Bacon Quotes
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He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.
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Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
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It is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.
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But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.
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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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Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
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It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that 'The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.'
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Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
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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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The worst men often give the best advice.
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For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.
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We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
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The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so.
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Men ought to find the difference between saltiness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory.
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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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Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
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I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.
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When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.
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It is natural to die as to be born.
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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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Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
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Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.
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He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.