Francis Bacon Quotes
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The master of superstition, is the people; and in all superstition, wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.
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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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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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Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
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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 ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
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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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If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the well-being of Church and State.
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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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Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
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Men in great place are thrice servants,-servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.
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Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
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They that reverence to much old times are but a scorn to the new.
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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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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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We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
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Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
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For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.
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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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Rather to excite your judgment briefly than to inform it tediously.
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People prefer to believe what they want to be true.
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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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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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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.'