Francis Bacon Quotes

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.

Brutes by their natural instinct have produced many discoveries, whereas men by discussion and the conclusions of reason have given birth to few or none.

The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand.

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

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.

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

Fortune makes him fool, whom she makes her darling.

Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees.

Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection.

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

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

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

There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

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

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them.

Consistency is the foundation of virtue.

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

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

Art is man added to Nature.

Innovations, which are the births of time.

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

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

Money is a good servant, a dangerous master.

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

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.

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.

Spouses are great impediments to great enterprises.

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.

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.

Custom is the principle magistrate of man's life.

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

Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life.

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

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

The universe must not be narrowed down to the limit of our understanding, but our understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered.

A cat will never drown if she sees the shore.

This world's a bubble.

The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.

If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.