Famous Quotes & Sayings

Francis Bacon Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Francis Bacon.

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Famous Quotes By Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1146401

Nothing is terrible except fear itself. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2080676

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1776039

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. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1168944

Let the mind be enlarged ... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1705374

People prefer to believe what they want to be true. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1749581

Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2056193

Mixture of lie doeth ever add pleasure. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 282332

A small task if it be really daily will beat the efforts of a spasmodic Hercules. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 879416

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 216129

If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1887141

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 844037

If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2205519

The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the image of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them that they have no posterity. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 590061

Whoseoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Certain it is that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2130032

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 349530

The light that a man receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comes from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 578570

The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down ... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet it either does not observe them or it despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 659195

I regret not starting to paint earlier ... It is one of the few things I do regret. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1829997

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. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 386712

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 80941

Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1264632

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1327670

We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, and cities have been decayed and demolished? — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1809688

Mysteries are due to secrecy. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1180006

Great changes are easier than small ones. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1052031

Let every student of nature take this as a rule,
that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2065283

When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1851606

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1808547

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 1627691

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 1130071

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. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1469672

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1974405

Where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 317309

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1549919

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 1392728

It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 869447

I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2037094

There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2268765

And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Aesop makes the fable, that when he died he told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried under the ground in his vineyard: and they digged over the ground, gold they found none, but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man's life. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2246677

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1592935

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 2141552

All painting is an accident. But it's also not an accident, because one must select what part of the accident one chooses to preserve. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1659095

My painting is not violent, it's life that is violent. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1694782

So if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied. And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2094183

None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch but envy. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1716111

To know truly is to know by causes. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1729368

Certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 2041753

Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1754824

The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1842251

The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1779959

Photographs are not only points of reference ... they're often triggers of ideas. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1997359

But this is that which will dignify and exalt knowledge: if contemplation and action be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been: a conjunction like unto that of the highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1942010

The images of men's wit and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the worry of time and capable of perpetual renovation. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1787826

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1926865

We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to God above, who "showeth His wonders in the deep". — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1883707

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1860303

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1815770

Virtue is like precious odours, more fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1855387

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 1822117

The only really interesting thing is
what happens between two people in a room. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 398112

States, as great engines, move slowly. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1007630

The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance - if it is not irrational, you make illustration. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 886737

So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 838851

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 784674

A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 605057

A just fear of an imminent danger, though be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 560557

For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 525576

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest shall be provided or its loss shall not be felt. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 461349

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 414558

Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1031898

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. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 287216

Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 282172

There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 255265

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. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 252368

To spend too much time in them [studying] is sloth, to use them too much for ornament is affectation, to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor* of a scholar ... . — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 210464

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 204052

I think of myself as a kind of pulverizing machine into which everything I look at and feel is fed. I believe that I am different from the mixed-media jackdaws who use photographs etc. more or less literally. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 201934

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 156210

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 146103

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 1378095

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1511574

He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1467800

The true atheist is he whose hands are cauterized by holy things. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1460866

Existence is in a way so banal, you may as well try and make a kind of grandeur of it — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1425277

By this means we presume we have established for ever, a true and legitimate marriage between the Empirical and Rational faculty; whose fastidious and unfortunate divorce and separation hath troubled and disordered the whole race and generation of mankind. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1425012

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

Francis Bacon Quotes 1419650

The worst men often give the best advice. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1418873

The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1402397

In revenge a man is but even with his enemy; for it is a princely thing to pardon, and Solomon saith it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1386351

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration ... tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1520991

More dangers have deceived men than forced them. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1370274

Atheism leads a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1333853

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1258632

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. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1208939

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgement and execution of business. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1149350

It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1146845

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. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1143643

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1100172

Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority. — Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes 1083872

Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. — Francis Bacon