Francis Bacon Quotes

563 Sourced Quotes

Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he make his wings shorter.

Francis Bacon
Speech of a man's self ought to be seldom and well chosen. I knew one was wont to say in scorn, "He must needs be a wise man, he speaks so much of himself." There is but one case wherein a man may commend himself with good grace, and that is in commending virtue in another, especially if it be a virtue where unto himself pretendeth.

Francis Bacon
A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.

Francis Bacon
There is no secrecy comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, it flies so swift that it outruns the eye.

Francis Bacon
A single life doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool.

Francis Bacon
It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter.

Francis Bacon
Hope is a leaf-joy which may be beaten out to a great extension, like gold.

Francis Bacon
For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves.

Francis Bacon
The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man: insomuch, that if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living creatures.

Francis Bacon
The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

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

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

Francis Bacon
The first creation of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and His Sabbath-work ever since is the illumination of the spirit.

Francis Bacon
Do not wonder, if the common people speak more truly than those of high rank; for they speak with more safety.

Francis Bacon
In States, arms and learning have a concurrence or near sequence in time.

Francis Bacon
Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.

Francis Bacon
Thales was reputed to be one of the wise men who made answer to the question when a man should marry: "A young man not yet, an old man not at all."

Francis Bacon
Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for, as it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it the more deformed; and as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances.

Francis Bacon
The partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch not in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs.

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

Francis Bacon
It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.

Francis Bacon
This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes.

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

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

Francis Bacon
Neither the naked hand nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand.

Francis Bacon
Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man choose them for employment; for certainly you were better take for business, a man somewhat absurd, than over-formal.

Francis Bacon
Neither is money the sinews of war (as it is trivially said).

Francis Bacon
I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defense. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.

Francis Bacon
So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.

Francis Bacon
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

Francis Bacon