Francis Bacon Quotes on Mind (23 Quotes)


    The best preservative to keep the mind on health is the faithful admonition of a friend.

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

    It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.

    The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

    Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.


    It is a miserable state of mind, to have few things to desire and many things to fear And yet that commonly is the case of kings.

    If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

    Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.

    Poesy was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.

    When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

    Nakedness is uncomely as well in mind, as body.

    We cannot too often think, that there is a never sleeping eye that reads the heart, and registers our thoughts.

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

    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.

    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.

    There is one radical distinction between different minds that some minds are stronger and apter to mark the differences of things, others mark their resemblances.

    The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy (science) for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never been made), much may be hoped.

    Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.

    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.

    Science is the labor and handicraft of the mind poetry can only be considered its recreation.

    There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death ... Revenge triumphs over death love slights it honor aspireth to it grief flieth to it.

    Man, being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

    Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.


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