Francis Bacon Quotes
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Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
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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.
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The world's a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.
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In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
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To know truly is to know by causes.
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Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.
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…it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives…
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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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He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.
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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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Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
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Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
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Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.
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The worst men often give the best advice.
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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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He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
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Art is man added to Nature.
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I think I tend to destroy the better paintings, or those that have been better to a certain extent. I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities, and they lose everything. I think I would say that I destroy all the better paintings.
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Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was invented.
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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.
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It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
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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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A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.