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It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
Francis Bacon -
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.
Francis Bacon
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The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.
Francis Bacon -
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?
Francis Bacon -
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
Francis Bacon -
Disciples do owe their masters only a temporary belief, and a suspension of their own judgment till they be fully instructed.
Francis Bacon -
But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.
Francis Bacon -
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.
Francis Bacon
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Art is man added to Nature.
Francis Bacon -
In all superstition wise men follow fools.
Francis Bacon -
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Francis Bacon -
In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
Francis Bacon -
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.
Francis Bacon -
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.
Francis Bacon
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Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
Francis Bacon -
Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?
Francis Bacon -
But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.
Francis Bacon -
All bravery stands upon comparisons.
Francis Bacon -
The way of fortune is like the milky way in the sky; which is a meeting, or knot, of a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together : so are there a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
Francis Bacon -
Such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener.
Francis Bacon
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The only really interesting thing is what happens between two people in a room.
Francis Bacon -
But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
Francis Bacon -
If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
Francis Bacon -
First the amendment of their own minds. For the removal of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind.
Francis Bacon