Francis Bacon Best Quotes

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

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#4. It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.

Francis Bacon

#5. We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to God above, who "showeth His wonders in the deep".

Francis Bacon

#6. 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.

Francis Bacon

#7. Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.

Francis Bacon

#8. All will come out in the washing.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#12. Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.

Francis Bacon

#13. Wounds cannot be cured without searching.

Francis Bacon

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. By this means we presume we have established for ever, a true and legitimate marriage between the Empirical and Rational faculty; whose fastidious and unfortunate divorce and separation hath troubled and disordered the whole race and generation of mankind.

Francis Bacon

#17. It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment

Francis Bacon

#18. Great riches have sold more men than they have bought.

Francis Bacon

#19. The folly of one man is the fortune of another.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#21. God has two textbooks - Scripture and Creation - we would do well to listen to both.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#23. They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.

Francis Bacon

#24. 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.

Francis Bacon

#25. For knowledge, too, is itself power.

Francis Bacon

#26. The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.

Francis Bacon

#27. The light that a man receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comes from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.

Francis Bacon

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. Money is a good servant, a dangerous master.

Francis Bacon

#31. To know truly is to know by causes.

Francis Bacon

#32. We must start human society from scratch; as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.

Nicolas Chamfort

#33. Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Francis Bacon

#34. Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#36. The remedy is worse than the disease.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#38. The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.

Francis Bacon

#39. There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#42. The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery at first it deceives, at last it betrays

Francis Bacon

#43. The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

Francis Bacon

#44. The partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch not in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#46. People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.

Francis Bacon

#47. There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.

Francis Bacon

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

Francis Bacon

#49. All artists are vain, they long to be recognized and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at the same time they want to be free. But nobody is free.

Francis Bacon

#50. I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.

Francis Bacon

#51. Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

Francis Bacon

#52. (Francis) Bacon's best known writings are his essays. They are loved for many reasons, such as their being so short.

Richard Armour

#53. 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.

Francis Bacon

#54. 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

#55. Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

Francis Bacon

#56. Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Francis Bacon

#57. Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it ... There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man's observation, what he finds good and of what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.

Francis Bacon

#58. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

Francis Bacon

#59. By far the best proof is experience.

Francis Bacon

#60. But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.

Francis Bacon

#61. The worst men often give the best advice.

Francis Bacon

#62. I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick.

Louise Bourgeois

#63. Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.

Francis Bacon

#64. The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.

Francis Bacon

#65. The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

Francis Bacon

#66. I remember when you used to have your profession on your passport and I always thought that being a painter was the best one to be, because my heroes were Goya and Francis Bacon.

Damien Hirst

#67. Men leave their riches either to their kindred or their friends, and moderate portions prosper best in both.

Francis Bacon

#68. Jesus would have been one of the best photographers that ever existed. He was always looking at the beauty of people souls. In fact Jesus was constantly making pictures of God in people's life by looking at their souls and exposing them to his light.

Francis Bacon

#69. The colors that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green.

Francis Bacon

#70. A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.

Francis Bacon