Francis Bacon Quotes
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Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
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Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.
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It is natural to die as to be born.
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There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
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Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
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People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
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When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.
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We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
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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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Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
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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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Rather to excite your judgment briefly than to inform it tediously.
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Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was invented.
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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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Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
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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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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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Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.
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They that reverence to much old times are but a scorn to the new.
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Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
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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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The images of mens wits and knowledge remain in books. They generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages.
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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.