Francis Bacon Quotes

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little, and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not keep their suspicions in smother.

I don't believe art is available; it's rare and curious and should be completely isolated; one is more aware of its magic the more it is isolated.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

In all superstition wise men follow fools.

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.

Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

Whatever you can, count.

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

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

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

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.

When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others.

...to invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deformed persons commonly take revenge on nature.

A man who contemplates revenge keeps his wounds green.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.

Judges ought to be more learned, than witty, more reverend, than plausible, and more advised, than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

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

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

When Christ came into the world, peace was sung; and when He went out of the world, peace was bequeathed.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

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

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

Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection.