C.M. Bacon Quotes

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

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

Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.

It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.

If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.

Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life.

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

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.

A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.

Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

Parents who wish to train up their children in the way they should go must go in the way in which they would have their children go.

A man who contemplates revenge keeps his wounds green.

The voice of the people has about it something divine: for how otherwise can so many heads agree together as one?

Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

Whatever you can, count.

O life! An age to the miserable, a moment to the happy.

Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are are only good intellectual tools.

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

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

Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.

One man alone had really known the sciences, namely, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln.

All science requires mathematics. [Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.]

The calendar is intolerable to all wisdom, the horror of all astronomy, and a laughing stock from a mathematician's point of view.

When a profit-seeking company proposes to take citizens' private land away for its own gain, people should stand up for their rights.

The ability to manage large assets well - it's like being Michael Jordan or winning the gold in the Olympics; it's what you aspire to.

If you're an actor, even a successful one, you're still waiting for the phone to ring.

Custom is the principle magistrate of man's life.

No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years before the thing begins to sort itself out.

Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.

Some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you the story in a long diatribe through the brain.

Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.

Art is man added to Nature.

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

The essential form of knowledge... is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.

But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.

Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.

I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

Spouses are great impediments to great enterprises.

There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.

Money is a good servant, a dangerous master.