FRANCIS BACON QUOTES VII

English philosopher (1561-1626)


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All colours will agree in the dark.

FRANCIS BACON
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Essays


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Tags: color


A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: revenge


Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: marriage


Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: nobility


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

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: beauty


A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: philosophy


It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: desire


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

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: revenge


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

Essays

Tags: lying


Good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: thought


They that deny a God destroy man's 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.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: God


The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: love


Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral

Tags: action


Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral

Tags: youth


Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum

Tags: knowledge


States as great engines move slowly.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning


There is yet another fault (with which I will conclude this part) which is often noted in learned men, that they do many times fail to observe decency and discretion in their behaviour and carriage, and commit errors in small and ordinary points of action, so as the vulgar sort of capacities do make a judgment of them in greater matters by that which they find wanting in them in smaller. But this consequence doth oft deceive men, for which I do refer them over to that which was said by Themistocles, arrogantly and uncivilly being applied to himself out of his own mouth, but, being applied to the general state of this question, pertinently and justly, when, being invited to touch a lute, he said, "He could not fiddle, but he could make a small town a great state." So no doubt many may be well seen in the passages of government and policy which are to seek in little and punctual occasions. I refer them also to that which Plato said of his master Socrates, whom he compared to the gallipots of apothecaries, which on the outside had apes and owls and antiques, but contained within sovereign and precious liquors and confections; acknowledging that, to an external report, he was not without superficial levities and deformities, but was inwardly replenished with excellent virtues and powers. And so much touching the point of manners of learned men.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: Men


So again we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers of the Church were excellently read and studied in all the learning of this heathen; insomuch that the edict of the Emperor Julianus (whereby it was interdicted unto Christians to be admitted into schools, lectures, or exercises of learning) was esteemed and accounted a more pernicious engine and machination against the Christian Faith than were all the sanguinary prosecutions of his predecessors; neither could the emulation and jealousy of Gregory, the first of that name, Bishop of Rome, ever obtain the opinion of piety or devotion; but contrariwise received the censure of humour, malignity, and pusillanimity, even amongst holy men; in that he designed to obliterate and extinguish the memory of heathen antiquity and authors. But contrariwise it was the Christian Church, which, amidst the inundations of the Scythians on the one side from the north-west, and the Saracens from the east, did preserve in the sacred lap and bosom thereof the precious relics even of heathen learning, which otherwise had been extinguished, as if no such thing had ever been.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: church


As for fortune and advancement, the beneficence of learning is not so confined to give fortune only to states and commonwealths, as it doth not likewise give fortune to particular persons. For it was well noted long ago, that Homer hath given more men their livings, than either Sylla, or Cæsar, or Augustus ever did, notwithstanding their great largesses and donatives, and distributions of lands to so many legions. And no doubt it is hard to say whether arms or learning have advanced greater numbers. And in case of sovereignty we see, that if arms or descent have carried away the kingdom, yet learning hath carried the priesthood, which ever hath been in some competition with empire.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: fortune


Medicine is a science which hath been (as we have said) more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced; the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: science