Francis Bacon famous quotes

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
-- Francis Bacon

#Wise #Wisdom #Clever

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake...
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Life #Positive

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
-- Francis Bacon

#Wisdom #Educational #Learning

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Success #Graduation

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Success #Time

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Beauty #Beautiful

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Roots #Missing

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Book #Reading

Money is a great servant but a bad master.
-- Francis Bacon

#Money #Masters #Servant

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
-- Francis Bacon

#Birthday #Time #Men

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
-- Francis Bacon

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Citizens #World

The worst men often give the best advice.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Men #Giving

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
-- Francis Bacon

#Humility #Mirrors #Understanding

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Fall #Angel

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
-- Francis Bacon

#Knowledge #Causes #Contemplation

Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.
-- Francis Bacon

#Home #House #Looks

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
-- Francis Bacon

#Wise #Peace #Hurt

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Power #Men #Self

God's first creature, which was light.
-- Francis Bacon

#Light #Firsts #Evolution

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.
-- Francis Bacon

#Ornaments #Delight #Study

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Happiness #Wisdom #Humility

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
-- Francis Bacon

#Law #Judging #Construction

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Way

By far the best proof is experience.
-- Francis Bacon

#Science #Experience #Belief

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Fire #May #Fame

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
-- Francis Bacon

#True Friend #Believe #Learning

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.
-- Francis Bacon

#Happiness #New Beginnings #Loss

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
-- Francis Bacon

#Motivational #Hope #Wisdom

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
-- Francis Bacon

#Nature #Understanding #Subtlety

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
-- Francis Bacon

#Math #Science #Men

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.
-- Francis Bacon

#Patience #Optimism #Soul

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
-- Francis Bacon

#Teacher #Military #Reading

A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
-- Francis Bacon

#Lunch #Breakfast #Dinner

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
-- Francis Bacon

#Forgiveness #Revenge #Anger

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.
-- Francis Bacon

#Travel #School #Journey

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
-- Francis Bacon

#Christian #Photography #Adversity

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
-- Francis Bacon

#Revenge #Anger #Men

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
-- Francis Bacon

#Atheist #Philosophy #Men

It is impossible to love and to be wise.
-- Francis Bacon

#Love #Wise #Impossible

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Medicine #Office

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Wine #Old Friends #Age

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
-- Francis Bacon

#Funny #Laughter #Humor

Art is man added to Nature.
-- Francis Bacon

#Art #Nature #Men

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
-- Francis Bacon

#Change #Time #Acceptance

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
-- Francis Bacon

#Beauty #Infinite #Sensible

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
-- Francis Bacon

#Marriage #Wedding #Men

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
-- Francis Bacon

#Wise #Witty #Philosophy

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Witty #Integrity #Judging

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
-- Francis Bacon

#Fashion #Art #Realizing

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Motivational #Trying

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
-- Francis Bacon

#Justice #Fairness

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Life #Choices

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

#Giving #Needs #Genius

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Character #Men #Mind

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.
-- Francis Bacon

#Pleasant #Variety

It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
-- Francis Bacon

#Fate #Men #Well Known

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
-- Francis Bacon

#Increase #Visiting

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
-- Francis Bacon

#Nature #Environment #Command

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
-- Francis Bacon

#God #Exercise #Intelligent

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Nature #Travel

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Motivational #Positive

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
-- Francis Bacon

#Happiness #Beauty #Art

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Art #Winning

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
-- Francis Bacon

#Nature #Science #Overcoming

Science is but an image of the truth.
-- Francis Bacon

#Truth #Science

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

#Life #Angel #Men

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
-- Francis Bacon

#Science #Power #Wit

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils
-- Francis Bacon

#Art #Attitude #People

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
-- Francis Bacon

#Daughter #Mother #Time

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
-- Francis Bacon

#Truth #Failure #Frustration

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Experience #Unexpected

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
-- Francis Bacon

#Love #Real Friends #Crowds

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Success #Wisdom

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Change #Live Life

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
-- Francis Bacon

#Inspirational #Life #Nature

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Littles #Study

Silence is the virtue of fools.
-- Francis Bacon

#Luxury #Silence #Fool

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Judging #Merit

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
-- Francis Bacon

#Life #Education #Teacher

Acorns were good until bread was found.
-- Francis Bacon

#Food #Bread #Acorns

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.
-- Francis Bacon

#Dog #Truth #Errors

Ipsa scientia potestas est. (Knowledge itself is power.)
-- Francis Bacon

#Education #Knowledge

For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.
-- Francis Bacon

#Memories #Men #Names

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
-- Francis Bacon

#Death #Fear #Believe

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.
-- Francis Bacon

#Politics #Moral #Fierce

the serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.
-- Francis Bacon

#Dragons #Want #Serpent

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
-- Francis Bacon

#Death #Children #Science

Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Use #Grows

For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #May #Sparks

The remedy is worse than the disease.
-- Francis Bacon

#Disease #Remedy

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
-- Francis Bacon

#Rebellion #Worst #Belly

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
-- Francis Bacon

#Men #Littles

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.
-- Francis Bacon

#Fall #Knowledge #Angel