Francis Bacon Quotes

The virtue of prosperity is temperance the virtue of adversity is fortitude.

Old wood best to burn old wine to drink old friends to trust and old authors to read.

The best work and of greatest merit for the public has proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.

As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen so are all innovations which are the births of time.

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

Some books are to be tasted others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously if they be not altered for the better designedly.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

Reading makes a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man.

The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one ... the more active and swift the latter is the further he will go astray.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.

If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts but if he will content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

Fortune makes him fool whom she makes her darling.

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.

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

There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends but he joyeth the more and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friends but he grieveth the less.

It is left only to God and to the angels to be lookers on.

Hope is a good breakfast but it is a bad supper.

Houses are built to live in and not to look on.

Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us.

I take all knowledge to be my province.

For knowledge too is itself a power.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice which the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out.

Reading maketh a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man.

Little do men perceive what solitude is and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company and faces are but a gallery of pictures and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love.

He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune for they are impediments to great enterprises either of virtue or mischief.

Money is like muck - not good unless it be spread.

Generally music feedeth that disposition of the spirits which it findeth.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.

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

If a man looks sharply and attentively he shall see fortune for though she be blind yet she is not invisible.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

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

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils for time is the greatest innovator.

Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of Man.

There was never law or sect or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.

In taking revenge a man is but equal to his enemy but in passing it over he is his superior.

I would live to study not study to live.

Histories make men wise poets witty the mathematics subtile natural philosophy deep morals grave logic and rhetoric able to contend.

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

The sun though it passes through dirty places yet remains as pure as before.

Virtue is like a rich stone best plain set.

Wives are young men's mistresses companions for middle age and old men's nurses.

The virtue of adversity is fortitude which in mortals is the heroical virtue.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.