Francis Bacon - The Advancement of Learning (1605)

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It is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, which the Apostle immediately addeth to the former clause; for so he saith, Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up.

Francis Bacon
The knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above, and some springing from beneath; the one informed by the light of nature, the other inspired by divine revelation.

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

Francis Bacon
The obliteration of the evil hath been practised by two means, some kind of redemption or expiation of that which is past, and an inception or account de novo for the time to come. But this part seemeth sacred and religious, and justly; for all good moral philosophy (as was said) is but a handmaid to religion.

Francis Bacon
Words are the tokens current and accepted for conceits, as moneys are for values.

Francis Bacon
A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.

Francis Bacon
I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.

Francis Bacon
Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

Francis Bacon
The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge.

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
Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.

Francis Bacon