Best Quotes by Francis Bacon (Top 10)
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If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
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Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Francis Bacon
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A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon
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Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. 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.
Francis Bacon
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There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon
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Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake...
Francis Bacon
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Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
Francis Bacon
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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
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Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
Francis Bacon
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Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
Francis Bacon
More Francis Bacon Quotes
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It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
Francis Bacon
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In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
Francis Bacon
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Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Francis Bacon
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Money is a great servant but a bad master.
Francis Bacon
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The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon
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In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
Francis Bacon
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If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted
Francis Bacon
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It is impossible to love and to be wise.
Francis Bacon
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The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
Francis Bacon
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Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
Francis Bacon
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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Francis Bacon
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They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon
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Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
Francis Bacon
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Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
Francis Bacon
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The remedy is worse than the disease.
Francis Bacon
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Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
Francis Bacon
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He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
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A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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Knowledge is power.
Francis Bacon
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Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.
Francis Bacon
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God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon
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Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon
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By far the best proof is experience.
Francis Bacon
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Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.
Francis Bacon
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Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Francis Bacon
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Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
Francis Bacon
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Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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Consistency is the foundation of virtue.
Francis Bacon
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Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Francis Bacon
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Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon
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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.
Francis Bacon
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If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
Francis Bacon
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Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
Francis Bacon
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A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Francis Bacon
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Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.
Francis Bacon
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The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
Francis Bacon
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Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
Francis Bacon
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Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
Francis Bacon
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The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
Francis Bacon
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To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affection; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar.
Francis Bacon
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The human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.
Francis Bacon
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There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
Francis Bacon
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Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon
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He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon
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Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
Francis Bacon
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But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.
Francis Bacon
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He of whom many are afraid ought himself to fear many.
Francis Bacon
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It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
Francis Bacon
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Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
Francis Bacon
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Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
Francis Bacon
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If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
Francis Bacon
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Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use
be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.
Francis Bacon
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All rising to great place is by winding stair.
Francis Bacon
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The folly of one man is the fortune of another.
Francis Bacon
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Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Francis Bacon
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Acorns were good until bread was found.
Francis Bacon
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Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
Francis Bacon
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I would live to study, not study to live.
Francis Bacon
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The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.
Francis Bacon
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Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
Francis Bacon
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Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
Francis Bacon
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They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
Francis Bacon
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Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
Francis Bacon
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The world's a bubble, and the life of man, Less than a span.
Francis Bacon
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The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.
Francis Bacon
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Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
Francis Bacon
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Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
Francis Bacon
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Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.
Francis Bacon
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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
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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.
Francis Bacon
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No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
Francis Bacon
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Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
Francis Bacon
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There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
Francis Bacon
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Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Francis Bacon
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As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.
Francis Bacon
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Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
Francis Bacon
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In charity there is no excess.
Francis Bacon
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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. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon
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[Science is] the labor and handicraft of the mind.
Francis Bacon
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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.
Francis Bacon