FRANCIS BACON QUOTES V

English philosopher (1561-1626)


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And let a man beware, how he keepeth company with choleric and quarrelsome persons; for they will engage him into their own quarrels.

FRANCIS BACON
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"Of Travel", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral


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To speak now of the true temper of empire, it is a thing rare and hard to keep; for both temper, and distemper, consist of contraries. But it is one thing, to mingle contraries, another to interchange them. The answer of Apollonius to Vespasian, is full of excellent instruction. Vespasian asked him, What was Nero's overthrow? He answered, Nero could touch and tune the harp well; but in government, sometimes he used to wind the pins too high, sometimes to let them down too low. And certain it is, that nothing destroyeth authority so much, as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much.

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Empire", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

Tags: authority


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 lays it as if another had said it to him. And to say truth, it is not easy, when such a matter passed between two, to make it appear from which of them it first moved and began.

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Cunning", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

Tags: cunning


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

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Delays," Essays

Tags: fortune


He that hath a satirical vein, as maketh others afraid of his wit, so he need be afraid of others' memory.

FRANCIS BACON

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: satire


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.

FRANCIS BACON

Advancement of Learning

Tags: life


Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection.

FRANCIS BACON

Advancement of Learning

Tags: society


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

FRANCIS BACON

Apothegms

Tags: hope


Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.

FRANCIS BACON

De Augmentis Scientiarum


God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: gardening


A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: revenge


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

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: adversity


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


If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins them.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: courtesy


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 monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

FRANCIS BACON

Essex's Device

Tags: wit


It would be an 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

Novum Organum


The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum

Tags: understanding


Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: history


We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which the infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished?

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: cities