Francis Bacon Quotes
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The world's a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.
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It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
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The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
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Always let losers have their words.
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For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.
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…it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives…
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Knowledge is power.
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Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.
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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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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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To spend too much time in studies is sloth.
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Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
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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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The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet it either does not observe them or it despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.
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The worst men often give the best advice.
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When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.
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Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
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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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Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
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We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
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It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
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People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
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Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.
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Rebellions of the belly are the worst.