Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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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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Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.
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Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
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Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
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People prefer to believe what they want to be true.
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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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Dreams, and predictions of astrology....ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.
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In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
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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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Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?
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Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
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A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
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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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The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
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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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God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
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Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
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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 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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We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
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A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.
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The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
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I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.