Francis Bacon Quotes
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The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
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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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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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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.
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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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The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
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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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Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
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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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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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To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.
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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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Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.
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A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
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In all superstition wise men follow fools.
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There is superstition in avoiding superstition.
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God's first creature, which was light.
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The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.
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Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.
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The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
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The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.
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We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
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To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: 'Be angry, but sin not.' 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.'
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Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.