Francis Bacon - Essays (1597)

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The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men is the vicissitude of sects and religions.

Francis Bacon
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.

Francis Bacon
Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.

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
The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job, than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

Francis Bacon
The difficulties in princes' business are many and great, but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind.

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
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
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Francis Bacon
You shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves?

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
Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Francis Bacon
What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

Francis Bacon
The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

Francis Bacon
The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse.

Francis Bacon
Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences; whence it is bad in council though good in execution. The right use of the bold, therefore, is, that they never command in chief, but serve as seconds under the direction of others. For in council it is good to see dangers, and in execution not to see them unless they be very great.

Francis Bacon
A good name is like a precious ointment; it filleth all around about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.

Francis Bacon
Virtue is like precious odors — most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

Francis Bacon
It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tosed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth... and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

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
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
Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning, and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and, lastly, his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.

Francis Bacon
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man's own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.

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
He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.

Francis Bacon
A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.

Francis Bacon
Men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss.

Francis Bacon