Top 100 Francis Bacon Quotes
#1. Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
Francis Bacon
#2. He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
#3. The understanding must not therefore be supplied with wings, but rather hung with weights, to keep it from leaping and flying.
Francis Bacon
#4. I have to hope that my instincts will do the right thing, because I can't erase what I have done. And if I drew something first, then my paintings would be illustrations of drawings.
Francis Bacon
#5. Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration ... tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils
Francis Bacon
#6. Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.
Francis Bacon
#7. But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.
Francis Bacon
#8. It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.
Francis Bacon
#9. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon
#10. No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
Francis Bacon
#11. The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.
Francis Bacon
#12. Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
[Proposition touching Amendment of Laws]
Francis Bacon
#13. The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness.
Francis Bacon
#14. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life.
Francis Bacon
#15. It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.
Francis Bacon
#16. If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
Francis Bacon
#17. 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
#18. Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
Francis Bacon
#19. It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
Francis Bacon
#20. There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.
Francis Bacon
#21. There was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise.
Francis Bacon
#22. In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
Francis Bacon
#25. Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon
#26. I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.
Francis Bacon
#27. All painting is an accident. But it's also not an accident, because one must select what part of the accident one chooses to preserve.
Francis Bacon
#29. 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.
Francis Bacon
#30. People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
Francis Bacon
#31. The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success.
Francis Bacon
#32. An illustrational form tells you through the intelligence immediately what the form is about, whereas a non-illustrational form works first upon sensation and then slowly leaks back into the fact.
Francis Bacon
#33. You see, painting has now become, or all art has now become completely a game, by which man distracts himself. What is fascinating actually is, that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to become any good at all.
Francis Bacon
#34. Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
Francis Bacon
#35. Dreams, and predictions of astrology ... ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.
Francis Bacon
#36. This communicating of a Man's Selfe to his Frend works two contrarie effects; for it re-doubleth Joys, and cutteth Griefs in halves.
Francis Bacon
#38. Virtue is like precious odours, more fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
Francis Bacon
#39. The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
Francis Bacon
#40. More dangers have deceived men than forced them.
Francis Bacon
#41. There are Idols which we call Idols of the Market. For Men associate by Discourse, and a false and improper Imposition of Words strangely possesses the Understanding, for Words absolutely force the Understanding, and put all Things into Confusion.
Francis Bacon
#43. Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.
Francis Bacon
#44. If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted
Francis Bacon
#45. [Science is] the labor and handicraft of the mind.
Francis Bacon
#46. If I go to the National Gallery and I look at one of the great paintings that excite me there, it's not so much the painting that excites me as that the painting unlocks all kinds of valves of sensation within me which return me to life more violently.
Francis Bacon
#47. Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.
Francis Bacon
#49. It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
Francis Bacon
#50. Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
Francis Bacon
#51. Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?
Francis Bacon
#52. Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.
Francis Bacon
#53. Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.
Francis Bacon
#55. The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.
Francis Bacon
#57. Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.
Francis Bacon
#59. Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.
Francis Bacon
#60. Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.
Francis Bacon
#61. 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.
Francis Bacon
#62. Let no one think or maintain that a person can search too far or be too well studied in either the book of God's word or the book of God's works.
Francis Bacon
#64. Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
Francis Bacon
#65. A false friend is more dangerous than an open enemy
Francis Bacon
#66. We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.
Francis Bacon
#67. I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
Francis Bacon
#68. Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.
Francis Bacon
#69. I think I tend to destroy the better paintings, or those that have been better to a certain extent. I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities, and they lose everything. I think I would say that I destroy all the better paintings.
Francis Bacon
#70. The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon
#71. Spouses are great impediments to great enterprises.
Francis Bacon
#72. My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is the double of that which is.
Francis Bacon
#73. No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years before the thing begins to sort itself out.
Francis Bacon
#74. Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Francis Bacon
#75. I think of myself as a kind of pulverizing machine into which everything I look at and feel is fed. I believe that I am different from the mixed-media jackdaws who use photographs etc. more or less literally.
Francis Bacon
#76. It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
Francis Bacon
#77. Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
Francis Bacon
#78. Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.
Francis Bacon
#79. The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
Francis Bacon
#80. We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
Francis Bacon
#81. It has well been said that the arch-flatterer, with whom all petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.
Francis Bacon
#82. He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many.
Francis Bacon
#83. The surest way to prevent seditions ... is to take away the matter of them.
Francis Bacon
#85. The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.
Francis Bacon
#86. Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.
Francis Bacon
#87. Wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.
Francis Bacon
#89. 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
#90. There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
Francis Bacon
#91. Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
Francis Bacon
#92. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.
Francis Bacon
#93. 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.
Francis Bacon
#94. If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
Francis Bacon
#95. They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.
Francis Bacon
#96. Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
Francis Bacon
#97. There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
Francis Bacon
#98. 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
#99. Certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
Francis Bacon
#100. The colors that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green.
Francis Bacon
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