Francis Bacon

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the 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.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost 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.

Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a mans mind ... turn upon the poles of truth.

To choose time is to save time.

If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.

The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.

For it is esteemed a kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to inquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical, except they be such as may be thought secrets, rarities, and special subtleties, which humour of vain supercilious arrogancy is justly derided in Plato.... But the truth is, they be not the highest instances that give the securest information; as may well be expressed in the tale ... of the philosopher, that while he gazed upwards to the stars fell into the water; for if he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the stars. So it cometh often to pass, that mean and small things discover great, better than great can discover the small.

They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.

Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others.

Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly.

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.

Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more mans nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.

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

There are three things which make a nation great and prosperous a fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy conveyance for men and commodities.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics) that, the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

A prudent question is one half of wisdom.

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.

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

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; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.

When any of the four pillars of governmentreligion, justice, counsel, and treasureare mainly shaken or weakened, men had need to pray for fair weather.

All good moral philosophy is but a handmaid to religion.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

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

Nor is mine a trumpet which summons and excites men to cut each other to pieces with mutual contradictions, or to quarrel and fight with one another; but rather to make peace between themselves, and turning with united forces against the Nature of Things,

But men must know, that in this theater of mans life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Chiefly the mold of a mans fortune is in his own hands.

The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.

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.

There was never miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to confess a God.

God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.

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

We cannot command nature except by obeying her.

Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome seldom extinguished.

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.

Money is a good servant but a bad master.

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

And as for Mixed Mathematics, I may only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them, as nature grows further disclosed.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection.

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

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled: Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.

Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?

Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?

It is impossible to love and be wise.

There was a young man in Rome that was very like Augustus Caesar; Augustus took knowledge of it and sent for the man, and asked him 'Was your mother never at Rome?' He answered 'No Sir; but my father was.'

God's first creature, which was light.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

One of the Seven was wont to say; 'Laws were like cobwebs; where the small flies were caught, and the great brake through.'

Knowledge itself is power. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.

For knowledge, too, is itself power.

Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of mans estate.

If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.

When a judge departs from the letter of the law he becomes a lawbreaker.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

The art of invention grows young with the things invented.

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.

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

The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

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

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

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.

Those herbs which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but, being trodden upon and crushed, are three; that is, burnet, wild thyme and watermints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.

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

When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely.

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, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks.

There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.

It [friendship] redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good Fortune deceived not

Of perfidious friends: We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

Over a century after the publication of the Copernican system, one of England's most renowned intellectual luminaries was still unconvinced: 'Nevertheless, in the system of Copernicus there are found many and great inconveniences; for both the loading of the earth with a triple motion is very incommodious, and the separation of the sun from the company of the planets, with which it has so many passions in common, is likewise a difficulty, and the introduction of so much immobility in nature, by representing the sun and stars as immovable, especially being of all bodies the highest and most radiant, and making the moon revolve about the earth in an epicycle, and some other assumptions of his, are the speculations of one who cares not what fictions he introduces into nature, provided his calculations answer.'

I knew a wise man that 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.'

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

Above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.

There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death ... Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.

One of the fathers saith ... that old men go to death, and death comes to young men.

I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.

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

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

Every rod or staff of empire is truly crooked at the top.

A man ought warily to begin charges which once begun will continue.

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

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

Defer not charities till death; for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another mans than of his own.

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.

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

The images of mens wits and knowledge remain in books.... They generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others.

As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.

They that deny a God destroy mans nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

A little philosophy inclineth mans mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth mens minds about to religion.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

No man is angry that feels not himself hurt.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age.

All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.

It is good discretion not make too much of any man at the first; because one cannot hold out that proportion.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

Natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

It is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations, wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.

The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy (science); for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never been made), much may be hoped.

In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.

I knew one that when he wrote a letter he would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a bymatter.

That which above all other yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet.

Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight.

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

Dolendi modus, timendi non item. (To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.)

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

I would live to study, not study to live.

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Books are ships which pass through the vast sea of time.

By taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; But in passing over it, he is superior.

A king is one who has few things to desire and many things to fear.

Children sweeten labors; but they make misfortunes more Bitter.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self; And where there is no comparison, no envy.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Friends are thieves of time.

Certainly, virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed, for prosperity doth best discover vice, But adversity doth best discover virtue.

He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

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

Knowledge is a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures.

That law may be set down as good which is certain in meaning, just in precept, convenient in execution, agreeable to the form of government, and productive of virtue in those that live under it.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; But in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it.

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

The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense: the last was the light of reason: And his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit.

The folly of one man is the fortune of another; for no man prospers so suddenly as by others' errors.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.

It is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence and turn upon the poles of truth.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, And Adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt; when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

Perils commonly ask to be paid on pleasures.

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; But wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.

Nothing is to be feared but fear.

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

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

Studies teach not their own use; that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation.

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.

Great riches have sold more men than they have bought.

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

It is a miserable state of mind, to have few things to desire and many things to fear: And yet that commonly is the case of kings.

In peace the sons bury their fathers and in war the fathers bury their sons.

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

In contemplation, if a man begins with certainties he shall end in doubts; But if he be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.

If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic And rhetoric, able to contend.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green.

The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, And seldom drive business home to the full period, But content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Of great riches, there is no real use, except it be distribution; the rest is but conceit.

And Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom.

We cannot too often think, that there is a never sleeping eye that reads the heart, and registers our thoughts.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

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.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

Time is the greatest of innovators.

All rising to great place is by a winding stair.

There are three parts in truth: first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

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.

There is no worse torture than the torture of laws.

There is nothing 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 in smother.

There is one radical distinction between different minds that some minds are stronger and apter to mark the differences of things, others mark their resemblances.

To say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards Men.

The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.

Crafty men condemn Studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them.

This same Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle lights.

Light gains make heavy purses.

The world's a bubble; and the life of man Less than a span.

He that hath wife and children, hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of Virtue or Mischief.

What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; And writing an exact man.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

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

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

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

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

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

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