Francis Bacon - The Advancement of Learning (1605)

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The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

Francis Bacon
Philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied, or are not much wanted.

Francis Bacon
For as your majesty saith most aptly and elegantly, As the tongue speaketh to the ear so the gesture speaketh to the eye.

Francis Bacon
Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.

Francis Bacon
This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes.

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

Francis Bacon
It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

Francis Bacon
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

Francis Bacon
We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Francis Bacon
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

Francis Bacon
Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.

Francis Bacon
As we divided natural philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes, and productions of effects: so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes.

Francis Bacon
For it being the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as in a champaign region, and not in the enclosures of particularity, the mathematics of all other knowledge were the goodliest fields to satisfy that appetite.

Francis Bacon
Insomuch as we see in the schools both of Democritus and of Pythagoras, that the one did ascribe figure to the first seeds of things, and the other did suppose numbers to be the principles and originals of things.

Francis Bacon
In mathematics I can report no deficience, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics.

Francis Bacon
All true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, ascendent and descendent, ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments.

Francis Bacon
But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages.

Francis Bacon
As for the mixed mathematics, I may only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them, as nature grows farther disclosed.

Francis Bacon
Men are further beholding... generally to chance, or anything else, than to logic, for the invention or arts and sciences.

Francis Bacon
Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs: for occasions have their revolutions, and what has once been advantageously used may be so again, either as an old thing or a new one.

Francis Bacon
The genius of any single man can no more equal learning, than a private purse hold way with the exchequer.

Francis Bacon
Seek first the virtues of the mind; and other things either will come, or will not be wanted .

Francis Bacon
The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.

Francis Bacon
The age of antiquity is the youth of the world. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient 'ordine retrogrado', by a computation backward from ourselves.

Francis Bacon
Only charity admitteth no excess. For so we see, aspiring to be like God in power, the angels transgressed and fell; Ascendam, et ero similis altissimo: by aspiring to be like God in knowledge, man transgressed and fell; Eritis sicut Dii, scientes bonum et malum: but by aspiring to a similitude of God in goodness or love, neither man nor angel ever transgressed, or shall transgress.

Francis Bacon
Medicine is a science which hath been (as we have said) more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced: the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, but small addition. It considereth causes of diseases, with the occasions or impulsions ; the diseases themselves, with the accidents ; and the cures, with the preservation.

Francis Bacon
But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

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
It [Poesy] was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind.

Francis Bacon
Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi? These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.

Francis Bacon