Francis Bacon Quotes
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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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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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Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.
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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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The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.
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The great atheists, indeed are hypocrites; which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end.
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Truth is a naked and open daylight.
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My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is the double of that which is.
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Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.
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Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
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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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There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.
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It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth . . . and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.
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The world's a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.
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Children sweeten labours. But they make misfortune more bitter. They increase the care of life. But they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts. But memory, merit and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.
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A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
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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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Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.
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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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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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Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
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In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works we may very properly apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works; accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention.
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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.