Francis Bacon Quotes
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Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
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The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
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Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
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It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
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I don't believe art is available; it's rare and curious and should be completely isolated; one is more aware of its magic the more it is isolated.
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Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life.
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Money is like muck, not good unless spread.
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Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
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The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
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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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The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.
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Truth is a naked and open daylight.
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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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Disciples do owe their masters only a temporary belief, and a suspension of their own judgment till they be fully instructed.
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Great Hypocrites are the real atheists.
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The Syllogism consists of propositions, propositions consist of words, words are symbols of notions. Therefore if the notions themselves (which is the root of the matter) are confused and over-hastily abstracted from the facts, there can be no firmness in the superstructure. Our only hope therefore lies in a true induction.
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Upon a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures is the work and aim of human power. To discover the Form of a given nature, or its true difference, or its causal nature, or fount of its emanation... this is the work and aim of human knowledge.
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Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.
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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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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.
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Nil terribile nisi ipse timor.
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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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We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.