Francis Bacon - Man Quotes

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A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return.

Francis Bacon
Another argument of hope may be drawn from this — that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

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
For man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection: and they be three wisdoms of divers natures, which do often sever: wisdom of the behaviour, wisdom of business, and wisdom of state.

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

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
Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, — part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly.

Francis Bacon
Merit and good works is the end of man's motion, and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest.

Francis Bacon
We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom; and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man, not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.

Francis Bacon
There was a young man in Rome that was very like Augustus Caesar; Augustus took knowledge of it and sent for the man, and asked him "Was your mother never at Rome?" He answered "No Sir; but my father was."

Francis Bacon
The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes the wrong one.

Francis Bacon
To God, truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion has been exhausted.

Francis Bacon
It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupieth it.

Francis Bacon
This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

Francis Bacon
There is no way but to meditate and ruminate well upon the effects of anger, — how it troubles man's life; and the best time to do this is to look back upon anger when the fit is thoroughly over.

Francis Bacon
If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him or those that have interest in him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends, to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for. In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.

Francis Bacon
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

Francis Bacon
Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclination. This of all the virtues and dignities of the mind, is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Francis Bacon
There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such flatterer as a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend.

Francis Bacon
Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

Francis Bacon
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Francis Bacon
For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes.

Francis Bacon
Socrates was pronounced by the Oracle of Delphos to be the wisest man in Greece, which he would turn from himself ironically, saying there could be nothing in him to verify the oracle, except this, that he was not wise and knew it, and others were not wise and knew it not.

Francis Bacon
Were it not better for a man in a fair room to set up one great light, or branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with a rushlight into every dark corner.

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

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

Francis Bacon
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.

Francis Bacon
A man that is young in years may be old in hours if he have lost no 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