Francis Bacon Quotes (437 Quotes)

They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.

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

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.

This delivering of knowledge in distinct and disjointed aphorisms doth leave the wit of man more free to turn and toss, and to make use of that which is so delivered to more several purposes and applications

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

Art is man added to nature.

The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

There be that can pack the cards, and yet cannot play well.

All bravery stands on comparisons.

In thinking, if a person begins with certainties, they shall end in doubts, but if they can begin with doubts, they will end in certainties.

The arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.

For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul a sick body is a prison.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, 'Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.'

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

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

Of perfidious friends We read that we ought to forgive our enemies but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.

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.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

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.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

Such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, n.

Age will not be defied.

Knowledge is a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.

Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time

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.

Boldness is a child of ignorance.

New nobility is but the act of power, but ancient nobility is the act of time.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Books will speak plain when counsellors blanch.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Studies teach not their own use that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding that it can hold men's hearts by hopes when it cannot by satisfaction

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

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.

For those who intend to discover and to understand, not to indulge in conjectures and soothsaying, and rather than contrive imitation and fabulous worlds plan to look deep into the nature of the real world and to dissect it -- for them everything must be sought in things themselves.

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.

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

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

The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning, it far surpasseth all other in nature

That law may be set down as good which is certain in meaning, just in precept, convenient in execution, agreeable to the form of government, and productive of virtue in those that live under it.

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

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.