Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
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The worst men often give the best advice.
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Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.
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A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.
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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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Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
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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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It is a great happiness when men's professions and their inclinations accord.
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Money is a great servant but a bad master.
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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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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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Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.
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Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
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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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I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.
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He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
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The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
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It is natural to die as to be born.
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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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Art is man added to Nature.
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Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.
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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.
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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…