Francis Bacon Quotes

563 Sourced Quotes

Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with, will make you lose your way.

Francis Bacon
Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us.

Francis Bacon
Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

Francis Bacon
Contempt putteth an edge upon anger more than the hurt itself.

Francis Bacon
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Francis Bacon
Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength; of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter much less. Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labor truly to get his living, and carefully to expend the good things committed to his trust.

Francis Bacon
Imagination I understand to be the representation of an individual thought. Imagination is of three kinds: joined with belief of that which is to come; joined with memory of that which is past; and of things present.

Francis Bacon
…it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives…

Francis Bacon
The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

Francis Bacon
The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love.

Francis Bacon
Studies teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

Francis Bacon
Certainly fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swoln, and drowns things weighty and solid.

Francis Bacon
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Francis Bacon
All the crimes on earth do not destroy so much of the human race, nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.

Francis Bacon
But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

Francis Bacon
Three means to fortify belief are experience, reason, and authority. Of these the more potent is authority; for belief upon reason or experience will stagger.

Francis Bacon
The world's a bubble, and the life of man
Less than a span.

Francis Bacon
Usury dulls and damps all industries, improvements, and new inventions, wherein money would be stirring if it were not for this slug.

Francis Bacon
For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man, and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions.

Francis Bacon
He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolors of death; but above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace."

Francis Bacon
This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.

Francis Bacon
The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it. For none deny, there is a God, but those, for whom it maketh that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man, than by this; that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it, within themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened, by the consent of others.

Francis Bacon
In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.

Francis Bacon
The desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess: neither can angel or man come into danger by it.

Francis Bacon
In regard of our deliverance past, and our danger present and to come, let us look up to God, and every man reform his own ways.

Francis Bacon
Mr. Bettenham said that virtuous men were like some herbs and spices, that give not out their sweet smell till they be broken or crushed.

Francis Bacon
The problem is, whether a man constantly and strongly believing that such a thing shall be, it don't help anything to the effecting of the thing.

Francis Bacon
There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.

Francis Bacon
That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express.

Francis Bacon
God grant that we may contend with other churches as the vine with the olive, which of us shall bear the best fruit; but not as the brier with the thistle, which of us shall be most unprofitable.

Francis Bacon