Francis Bacon Quotes
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The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.
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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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People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
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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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The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery at first it deceives, at last it betrays.
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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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He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.
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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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He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
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Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
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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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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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Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.
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Rather to excite your judgment briefly than to inform it tediously.
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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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The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
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Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
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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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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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They that reverence to much old times are but a scorn to the new.
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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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They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.
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To know truly is to know by causes.
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Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.