Francis Bacon Quotes

563 Sourced Quotes

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
It hath been an opinion that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and man.

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
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
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
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
The road to true philosophy is precisely the same with that which leads to true religion; and from both the one and the other, unless we would enter in as little children, we must expect to be totally excluded.

Francis Bacon
Suspicions among thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly to twilight; they are to be repressed, or, at least, well guarded, for they cloud the mind.

Francis Bacon
Augustus Caesar would say, that he wondered that Alexander feared he should want work, having no more [worlds] to conquer: as if it were not as hard a matter to keep as to conquer.

Francis Bacon
It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Francis Bacon
The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job, than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

Francis Bacon
The difficulties in princes' business are many and great, but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind.

Francis Bacon
The introduction of noble inventions seems to hold by far the most excellent place among human actions.

Francis Bacon