Quotes by Francis Bacon

• Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.
• Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
• Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
• Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
• Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
• Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
• Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
• People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
• People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
• Opportunity makes a thief.
• Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
• Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.
• Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
• Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
• Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
• Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
• 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.
• Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.
• Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.
• Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
• Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.
• Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
• Knowledge is power.
• Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
• Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
• Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
• 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.
• Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
• Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
• Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
• Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.
• When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
• What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
• We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
• Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
• The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.
• It is natural to die as to be born.
• The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
• Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.
• Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
• Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
• Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.
• Silence is the virtue of fools.
• Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
• Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.
• Science is but an image of the truth.
• Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.
• The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
• As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.
• 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.
• Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
• I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
• For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.
• Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
• Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
• Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
• Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
• Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.
• By indignities men come to dignities.
• Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
• Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
• God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
• Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
• Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
• Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
• Acorns were good until bread was found.
• A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
• A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
• A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
• A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
• A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.
• A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
• But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
• I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.
• It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.
• It is impossible to love and to be wise.
• It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
• It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.
• It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.
• In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
• In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
• Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
• If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
• If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
• Friends are thieves of time.
• If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
• A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
• Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.
• Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
• He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
• He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
• He that hath knowledge spareth his words.
• 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.
• Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
• God's first creature, which was light.
• God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
• God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.
• If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
• I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
• The remedy is worse than the disease.
• There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
• The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
• The worst men often give the best advice.
• The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
• The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
• The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
• There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.
• There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
• There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.
• Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
• They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
• They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
• Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
• This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
• Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.
• Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
• Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
• Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
• Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
• Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
• We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
• There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
• The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
• The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
• The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.
• The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
• The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
• The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
• There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
• The place of justice is a hallowed place.
• Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is