Francis Bacon - Essays (1597)

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Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.

Francis Bacon
It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Francis Bacon
Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man choose them for employment; for certainly you were better take for business, a man somewhat absurd, than over-formal.

Francis Bacon
Neither is money the sinews of war (as it is trivially said).

Francis Bacon
So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.

Francis Bacon
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

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

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
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
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
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
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.

Francis Bacon
So when any of the four pillars of government are mainly shakened or weakened (which are religion, justice, counsel, and treasure) men had need to pray for fair weather.

Francis Bacon
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures: It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man.

Francis Bacon
It has been well said that 'the arch-flatterer with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a man's self.'

Francis Bacon
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

Francis Bacon
Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study.

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
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
Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

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
Death…openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.

Francis Bacon
Houses are built to live in and not to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.

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
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
It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

Francis Bacon