Francis Bacon Quotes
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A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.
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The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
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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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Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.
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There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him.
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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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In all superstition wise men follow fools.
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He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
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A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
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The world's a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.
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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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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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For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves.
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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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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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Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
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The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.
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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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Truth is a naked and open daylight.
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Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
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There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
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Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
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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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My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads.