Francis Bacon Quotes
-
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
-
Dreams, and predictions of astrology....ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.
-
Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
-
The human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.
-
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.
-
People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
-
Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.
-
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.
-
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
-
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.
-
Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.
-
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.
-
The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
-
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.
-
They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.
-
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
-
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
-
Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.
-
Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.
-
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.