Francis Bacon - Time Quotes

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New nobility is but the act of power, but ancient nobility is the act of time.

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
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
A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of the eldest restricted, and the youngest ruined by indulgence; but in the midst, some that are, as it were, forgotten, who many times, nevertheless, prove the best.

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

Francis Bacon
There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and endings of things.

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
To seek to extinguish anger utterly, is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined, both in race and in time.

Francis Bacon
The surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them; for if there be fuel prepared it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.

Francis Bacon
Heat is a motion; expansive, restrained, and acting in its strife upon the smaller particles of bodies. But the expansion is thus modified; while it expands all ways, it has at the same time an inclination upward. And the struggle in the particles is modified also; it is not sluggish, but hurried and with violence.

Francis Bacon
Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

Francis Bacon
The information of the sense itself I sift and examine in many ways. For certain it is that the senses deceive; but then at the same time they supply the means of discovering their own errors; only the errors are here, the means of discovery are to seek.

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
It is a revered thing to see an ancient castle not in decay; how much more to behold an ancient family which have stood against the waves and weathers of time!

Francis Bacon
Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the times after our Saviour came into the world; for our Saviour himself did first show His power to subdue ignorance, by His conference with the priests and doctors of the law, before He showed His power to subdue nature by His miracles. And the coming of this Holy Spirit was chiefly figured and expressed in the similitude and gift of tongues, which are but vehicula scientiæ.

Francis Bacon
Not to resolve is to resolve; and many times it breeds as many necessities, and engageth as far in some other sort, as to resolve.

Francis Bacon
Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

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
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
As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all Innovations, which are the births of time.

Francis Bacon
The counsels to which Time is not called, Time will not ratify.

Francis Bacon
There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginning and outsets of things.

Francis Bacon
Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.

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

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
In the youth of a state arms do flourish; in the middle age of a state, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a state, mechanical arts and merchandise.

Francis Bacon
For rightly is truth called the daughter of time, not of authority.

Francis Bacon
To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Francis Bacon
The images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the worry of time and capable of perpetual renovation.

Francis Bacon
Men in great places are thrice servants, — servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so that they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times.

Francis Bacon