Francis Bacon Quotes

When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

The divisions of science are not like different lines that meet in one angle, but rather like the branches of trees that join in one trunk.

Of all things known to mortals, wine is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and inflaming the passions of mankind, being common fuel to them all.

If you can talk about it, why paint it?

Secrecy in suits goes a great way towards success.

Of all the things in nature, the formation and endowment of man was singled out by the ancients.

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man, Less than a span.

It is rightly laid down that 'true knowledge is knowledge by causes'. Also the establishment of four causes is not bad: material, formal, efficient and final.

Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.

That which above all other yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet.

Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.

Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

Perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

I've had photographs taken for portraits because I very much prefer working from the photographs than from models... I couldn't attempt to do a portrait from photographs of somebody I didn't know.

If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.

We only have our nervous system to paint.

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

I like, you may say, the glitter and colour that comes from the mouth, and I've always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.

A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.

The bee enclosed and through the amber shown Seems buried in the juice which was his own.

There are many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.

It was well said that envy keeps no holidays.

For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike.

The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.

There is nothing more certain in nature than that it is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated.

Praise is the reflection of virtue.

Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.

The genius of any single man can no more equal learning, than a private purse hold way with the exchequer.

Come home to men's business and bosoms.

Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.

A lie faces God and shrinks from man.

The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.

Men ought to find the difference between saltiness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory.

Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections... What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

It is good discretion not make too much of any man at the first; because one cannot hold out that proportion.

The natures and dispositions of men are, not without truth, distinguished from the predominance of the planets.

If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.

Velazquez found the perfect balance between the ideal illustration which he was required to produce, and the overwhelming emotion he aroused in the spectator.

Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.

Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.

Such philosophy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable speculation but shall be operative to the endowment and betterment of man's life.

...neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science.

There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.

All authority must be out of a man's self, turned . . . either upon an art, or upon a man.