Francis Bacon - Man Quotes

100 Sourced Quotes

View all Francis Bacon Quotes
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
The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy. But then let a man take heed that the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still beforehand, and is two for one.

Francis Bacon
The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man nor angels come into danger by it.

Francis Bacon
There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat in the pan;" which is, when that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him.

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

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

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

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
A man's nature is best perceived in privateness, for there is no affectation; in passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts; and in a new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him.

Francis Bacon
He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry? 'A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.'

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

Francis Bacon
I knew a wise man who had it for a by-word when he saw men hasten to a conclusion: "Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner."

Francis Bacon
Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.

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
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Francis Bacon
Discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any man.

Francis Bacon
Clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature; the mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.

Francis Bacon
It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.

Francis Bacon
Physic is of little use to a temperate person, for a man's own observation on what he finds does him good, and what hurts him is the best physic to preserve health.

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

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

Francis Bacon
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men-the master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order.

Francis Bacon
The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.

Francis Bacon