C.M. Bacon Quotes

It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

Painting is the pattern of one's own nervous system being projected on canvas.

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

Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.

To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

A good name is like precious ointment ; it filleth all round about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.

No man's fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

In charity there is no excess.

I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.

A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel.

An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise. For the distance is altered, and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.

Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.

Great riches have sold more men than they have bought.

Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.

A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made.

Wise sayings are not only for ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby knots in business are pierced and discovered.

It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.

One of the Seven [wise men of Greece] was wont to say: That laws were like cobwebs, where the small flies are caught and the great break through.

It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!

Money is a great treasure that only increases as you give it away.

First the amendment of their own minds. For the removal of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind.

Dreams, and predictions of astrology....ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.

In mathematics I can report no deficiency, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of Pure Mathematics.

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

More dangers have deceived men than forced them.

To know truly is to know by causes.

He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry? 'A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.'

Boldness is a child of ignorance

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people's plates.

One of the fathers saith . . . that old men go to death, and death comes to young men.

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

When any of the four pillars of government-religion, justice, counsel, and treasure-are mainly shaken or weakened, men had need to pray for fair weather.

But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness.

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

States are great engines moving slowly.

It's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.

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

It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.

The mold of our fortunes is in our own hands.

Medical men do not know the drugs they use, nor their prices.