Francis Bacon Quotes

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There is no doubt but men of genius and leisure may carry our method to greater perfection, but, having had long experience, we have found none equal to it for the commodiousness it affords in working with the Understanding.

Francis Bacon
The genius of any single man can no more equal learning, than a private purse hold way with the exchequer.

Francis Bacon
Diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling is good for the stone and veins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head and the like.

Francis Bacon
But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.

Francis Bacon
The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.

Francis Bacon
Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.

Francis Bacon
A man were better relate himself to a statue or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

Francis Bacon
The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense: for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels; so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

Francis Bacon
Heat is a motion of expansion, not uniformly of the whole body together, but in the smaller parts of it; and at the same time checked, repelled, and beaten back, so that the body acquires a motion alternative, perpetually quivering, striving and struggling, and irritated by repercussion, whence springs the fury of fire and heat.

Francis Bacon
To invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know

Francis Bacon
It is rightly laid down that 'true knowledge is knowledge by causes'. Also the establishment of four causes is not bad: material, formal, efficient and final.

Francis Bacon
Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?

Francis Bacon
The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success.

Francis Bacon
They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art.

Francis Bacon
Man always believes more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation.

Francis Bacon
Some men covet knowledge out of a natural curiosity and inquisitive temper; some to entertain the mind with variety and delight; some for ornament and reputation; some for victory and contention; many for lucre and a livelihood; and but few for employing the Divine gift of reason to the use and benefit of mankind.

Francis Bacon
Men should frequently call upon nature to render her account; that is, when they perceive that a body which was before manifest to the sense has escaped and disappeared, they should not admit or liquidate the account before it has been shown them where the body has gone to, and into what it has been received.

Francis Bacon
I work for posterity, these things requiring ages for their accomplishment.

Francis Bacon
Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs: for occasions have their revolutions, and what has once been advantageously used may be so again, either as an old thing or a new one.

Francis Bacon
Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

Francis Bacon
Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware, that they carry their anger rather with scorn, than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury, than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it.

Francis Bacon
He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat, committeth himself to prison.

Francis Bacon
Those experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give more light to the invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner's needle, which giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails, which give the motion.

Francis Bacon
Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.

Francis Bacon
Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.

Francis Bacon
Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.

Francis Bacon
We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?

Francis Bacon
For there is nothing more true in nature than the twin propositions, that "nothing is produced from nothing," and "nothing is reduced to nothing," but that the absolute quantum or sum total of matter remains unchanged, without increase or diminution.

Francis Bacon
Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, dies and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to things or the mind permit him, and neither knows or is capable of more.

Francis Bacon
Touching the length and shortness of life in living creatures, the information which may be had is but slender, observation is negligent, and tradition fabulous.

Francis Bacon