Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.
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There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.
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Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
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Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was invented.
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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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Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.
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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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Men in great place are thrice servants,-servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.
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Mysteries are due to secrecy.
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Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
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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 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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It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!
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A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
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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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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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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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Art is man added to Nature.
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He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.
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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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Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.
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I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.
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There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death . . . Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.