Francis Bacon Quotes

563 Sourced Quotes

I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.

Francis Bacon
Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled it you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Francis Bacon
The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

Francis Bacon
A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.

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

Francis Bacon
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

Francis Bacon
Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

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

Francis Bacon
It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

Francis Bacon
I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from the simple sensuous perception.

Francis Bacon
The winning of honor, is but the revealing of a man's virtue and worth, without disadvantage.

Francis Bacon
The flood of grief decreaseth when it can swell no longer.

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

Francis Bacon
Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.

Francis Bacon
It is seldom that beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue.

Francis Bacon
Whoever is out of patience is out of possession of his soul.

Francis Bacon
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.

Francis Bacon
Men possessing minds which are morose, solemn, and inflexible enjoy generally a greater share of dignity than of happiness.

Francis Bacon
The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men is the vicissitude of sects and religions.

Francis Bacon
It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.

Francis Bacon
Lukewarm persons think they may accommodate points of religion by middle ways and witty reconcilements, — as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man.

Francis Bacon
The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery; at first it deceives, at last it betrays.

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

Francis Bacon
I will say positively and resolutely that is it impossible an elective monarchy should be so free and absolute as an hereditary.

Francis Bacon
Death…openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.

Francis Bacon
Houses are built to live in and not to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.

Francis Bacon
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 in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

Francis Bacon
To seek to extinguish anger utterly, is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined, both in race and in time.

Francis Bacon
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 lays it as if another had said it to him.

Francis Bacon
A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so often over and over again.

Francis Bacon