Francis Bacon Quotes

563 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
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
You shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves?

Francis Bacon
Time is like a river, in which metals and solid substances are sunk, while chaff and straws swim upon the surface.

Francis Bacon
Affected dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to business that can be. It is like that, which the physicians call predigestion, or hasty digestion; which is sure to fill the body full of crudities, and secret seeds of diseases. Therefore measure not dispatch, by the times of sitting, but by the advancement of the business.

Francis Bacon
The weakness of patients, and sweetness of life, and nature of hope, maketh men depend upon physicians with all their defects.

Francis Bacon
Business is bought at a dear hand where there is small despatch.

Francis Bacon
If thou shalt aspire after the glorious acts of men, thy working shall be accompanied with compunction and strife, and thy remembrance followed with distaste and upbraidings; and justly doth it come to pass towards thee, O man, that since thou, which art God's work, doest him no reason in yielding him well-pleasing service, even thine own works also should reward thee with the like fruit of bitterness.

Francis Bacon
Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.

Francis Bacon
Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.

Francis Bacon
It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.

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
A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.

Francis Bacon
Tunes and airs have in themselves some affinity with the affections, — as merry tunes, doleful tunes, solemn tunes, tunes inclining men's minds to pity, warlike tunes, — so that it is no marvel if they alter the spirits, considering that tunes have a predisposition to the motion of the spirits.

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

Francis Bacon
Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and moneys in a state be not gathered into few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

Francis Bacon
A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.

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
It has been well said that 'the arch-flatterer with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a man's self.'

Francis Bacon
For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others.

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