Francis Bacon Quotes
-
…it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives…
-
To spend too much time in studies is sloth.
-
Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.
-
But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.
-
For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.
-
Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.
-
Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.
-
We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
-
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
-
To know truly is to know by causes.
-
Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
-
Always let losers have their words.
-
Mysteries are due to secrecy.
-
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.
-
Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.
-
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.'
-
Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
-
Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was invented.
-
I'm just trying to make images as accurately as possible off my nervous system as I can.
-
Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.
-
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.
-
People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
-
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.
-
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.