Francis Bacon Quotes
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Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
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Upon a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures is the work and aim of human power. To discover the Form of a given nature, or its true difference, or its causal nature, or fount of its emanation... this is the work and aim of human knowledge.
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Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
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A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
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The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
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Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.
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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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Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was invented.
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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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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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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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I'm just trying to make images as accurately as possible off my nervous system as I can.
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The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.
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Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
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Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
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The human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.
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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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Some artists leave remarkable things which, a 100 years later, don't work at all. I have left my mark; my work is hung in museums, but maybe one day the Tate Gallery or the other museums will banish me to the cellar... you never know.
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Dreams, and predictions of astrology....ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.
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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 monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
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Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man choose them for employment; for certainly you were better take for business, a man somewhat absurd, than over-formal.
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The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.
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A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.