Francis Bacon Quotes
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Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
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Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
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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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The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
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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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People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
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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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Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.
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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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Silence is the virtue of fools.
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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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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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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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It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.
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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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He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
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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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I think I tend to destroy the better paintings, or those that have been better to a certain extent. I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities, and they lose everything. I think I would say that I destroy all the better paintings.
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It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.
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They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.
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Rather to excite your judgment briefly than to inform it tediously.
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The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
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Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.