Francis Bacon Quotes

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

It's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.

It's such an extraordinary supple medium that you never do quite know what paint will do.

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.

Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.

Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.

Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.

Riches are for spending.

Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.

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.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

It's all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

Judges ought to remember that their office is to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

People prefer to believe what they want to be true.

If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.

The true bounds and limitations, whereby human knowledge is confined and circumscribed, ... are three: the first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality: the second, that we make application of our knowledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distates or repining: the third, that we do not presume by the contemplation of Nature to attain to the mysteries of God.

Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise. For the distance is altered, and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.

Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.

I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.

The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this-that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.

The folly of one man is the fortune of another.

A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.

He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great, nor too small tasks; for the first will make him dejected by often failings; and the second will make him a small proceeder, though often by prevailings.

Time is the author of authors.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

I would address one general admonition to all, that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or for fame, or power, or any of these inferior things, but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity. For it was from lust of power that the Angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell, but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man come in danger by it.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.

There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.

There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.

So if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied. And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage.

They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art.

Money is a great servant but a bad master.

He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.

The understanding must not therefore be supplied with wings, but rather hung with weights, to keep it from leaping and flying.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond ... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so

Doctor Johnson said, that in sickness there were three things that were material; the physician, the disease, and the patient: and if any two of these joined, then they get the victory; for, Ne Hercules quidem contra duos [Not even Hercules himself is a match for two]. If the physician and the patient join, then down goes the disease; for then the patient recovers: if the physician and the disease join, that is a strong disease; and the physician mistaking the cure, then down goes the patient: if the patient and the disease join, then down goes the physician; for he is discredited.

There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.

Take an arrow, and hold it in flame for the space of ten pulses, and when it cometh forth you shall find those parts of the arrow which were on the outsides of the flame more burned, blacked, and turned almost to coal, whereas the midst of the flame will be as if the fire had scarce touched it. This is an instance of great consequence for the discovery of the nature of flame; and sheweth manifestly, that flame burneth more violently towards the sides than in the midst.

A cat will never drown if she sees the shore.

Some artists leave remarkable things which, a 100 years later, don't work at all. I have left my mark; my work is hung in museums, but maybe one day the Tate Gallery or the other museums will banish me to the cellar ... you never know.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.

He that cometh to seek after knowledge, with a mind to scorn, shall be sure to find matter for his humour, but no matter for his instruction.

Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

We only have our nervous system to paint.

I'm working for myself; what else have I got to work for? How can you work for an audience? What do you imagine an audience would want? I have got nobody to excite except myself, so I am always surprised if anyone likes my work sometimes. I suppose I'm very lucky, of course, to be able to earn my living by something that really absorbs me to try to do, if that is what you call luck.

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.

Money is like muck, not good unless spread.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

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

Such philosophy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable speculation but shall be operative to the endowment and betterment of man's life.

Again there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress; which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.

If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

All superstition is much the same whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omen, retributive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common.

This communicating of a Man's Selfe to his Frend works two contrarie effects; for it re-doubleth Joys, and cutteth Griefs in halves.

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 some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, and cities have been decayed and demolished?

A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.

They that reverence to much old times are but a scorn to the new.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

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

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights ... A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure

If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs.

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

The worst men often give the best advice.

I work for posterity, these things requiring ages for their accomplishment.

Do not wonder if the common people speak more truly than those above them: they speak more safely.

I'm just trying to make images as accurately as possible off my nervous system as I can.

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

… for it is very probable, that the motion of gravity worketh weakly, both far from the earth, and also within the earth: the former because the appetite of union of dense bodies with the earth, in respect of the distance, is more dull: the latter, because the body hath in part attained its nature when it is some depth in the earth.

{Foreshadowing Isaac Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation (1687)}

It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, - 'Aye,' asked he again, 'but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?' And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest shall be provided or its loss shall not be felt.

Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

Upon a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures is the work and aim of human power. To discover the Form of a given nature, or its true difference, or its causal nature, or fount of its emanation ... this is the work and aim of human knowledge.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgement and execution of business.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

If a man is gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world.

But this is that which will dignify and exalt knowledge: if contemplation and action be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been: a conjunction like unto that of the highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.

Praise is the reflection of virtue.

Worthy books are not companions - they are solitudes: we lose ourselves in them and all our cares

The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

Photographs are not only points of reference ... they're often triggers of ideas.

Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.

The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.

No man's fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.