Francis Bacon Quotes
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It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
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Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
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But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men.
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God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
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Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.
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A cat will never drown if she sees the shore.
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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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We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
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In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
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People prefer to believe what they want to be true.
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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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If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.
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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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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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A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.
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There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little, and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not keep their suspicions in smother.
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It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
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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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He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.
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Nil terribile nisi ipse timor.
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Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
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For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves.
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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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But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.