Francis Bacon

Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

A man cannot speak to his son but as a father, to his wife but as a husband, to his enemy but upon terms, whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person.

Certainly it is a heaven upon earth to have a man's mind to move in charity, rest in providence and turn upon the poles of truth.

A just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war

In taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is superior.

Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad supper.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

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

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

Champagne for my sham friends, real pain for my real friends.

Travel in the younger sort is a part of education, in the elder a part of experience.

In counsel it is good to see dangers, but in execution not to see them unless they be very great.

Boldness is a child of ignorance

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

God never wrought miracles to convince atheism because his ordinary works convince it.

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

People of age object too much consult too long adventure too little repent too soon and seldom drive business home to it's conclusion but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Riches are for spending.

A man's nature runs either to herbs or to weeds, therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

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

Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns the water or but writes in dust.

The desire for power in excess caused angels to fall, the desire for knowledge in excess caused man to fall, but in charity is no excess, neither can man or angels come in danger by it.

For my name and memory I leave it to men's charitable speeches to foreign nations and to the next ages.

Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences; whence it is bad in council though good in execution.

Mark what a generosity and courage a dog will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man who, to him, is instead of a God

But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on

History makes people wise.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Whence we see spiders flies or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber a more than royal tomb.

As in nature things move violently to their place and calmly in their place so virtue in ambition is violent in authority settled and calm.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others that write what men do and not what they ought to do.

Decided cases are the anchors of the law as laws are of the state

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead but only the stroke of death.

The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one. Nay it is obvious that the more active and swift the latter is the further he will go astray.

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.

We cannot too often think there is a never sleeping eye which reads the heart and registers our thoughts

In charity there is no excess.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much more than to know little.

Sir Amice Pawlet when he saw too much haste made in any matter was wont to say "Stay a while that we may make an end the sooner

The four pillars of government . . . (which are religion justice counsel and treasure).

There be that can pack the cards and yet cannot play well.

What then remains but that we still should cry / Not to be born or being born to die?

Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend.

Poesy was ever thought to have some participation of divineness because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind.

The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning it far surpasseth all other in nature

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

A man who contemplates revenge keeps his wounds green.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty more reverent than plausible and more advised than confident. Above all things integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Ask a counsel of both times-of the ancient time what is best and of the latter time what is fittest

Life an age to the miserable and a moment to the happy.

Of great riches there is no real use except in the distribution, the rest is but conceit

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

Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds they ever fly by twilight.

Little do men perceive what solitude is and how far it extendeth. 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.

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.

If money be not they 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.

It is nothing won to admit men with an open door yet to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.

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.

When you wander as you often delight to do you wander indeed and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect but first for want of election when you having a large and fruitful mind should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

The place of justice is a hallowed place

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

Princes are like to heavenly bodies which cause good or evil times and which have much veneration but no rest.

Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man.

The Trinitarian believes a virgin to be the mother of a son who is her maker.

Truth is the daughter of time not of authority

If the hill will not come to Mahomet Mahomet will go to the hill.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits but not when it misses.

There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil busy workshops easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

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.

Severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be grave and not taunting.

Studies serve for delight for ornaments and for ability.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds they never fly by twilight.

He that defers his charity until he is dead is if a man weighs it rightly rather liberal of another man's goods than his own

New nobility is but the act of power but ancient nobility is the act of time.

The French are wiser than they seem and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

My essays . . . come home to men's business and bosoms.

Money is a good servant but a bad master.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, they need pruning by study

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

Discern of the coming on of years and think not to do the same things still, for age will not be defied.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us on this side of the grave.

He that travelleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school and not to travel.

Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.

Choose the life that is most useful and habit will make it the most agreeable.

All rising to a great place is by a winding stair

Certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers as they will set an house on fire and it were but to roast their eggs.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him.

Riches are a good handmaid but the worst mistress

A man must make his opportunity as oft as find it.

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

For those who intend to discover and to understand not to indulge in conjectures and soothsaying and rather than contrive imitation and fabulous worlds plan to look deep into the nature of the real world and to dissect it -- for them everything must be sought in things themselves.

I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore God never wrought miracle to convince atheism because his ordinary works convince it. It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Fame is like a river that beareth up things light and swollen and drowns things weighty and solid

When he wrote a letter he would put that which was most material in the postscript as if it had been a by-matter

Fortitude is the marshal of thought the armor of the will and the fort of reason.

The arch-flatterer with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a man's self

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively he shall see Fortune, for though she be blind yet she is not invisible.

Be not penny-wise. Riches have wings. Sometimes they fly away of themselves and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.

The wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion and opinion brings on substance.

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

For what a man would like to be true that he more readily believes

To suffering there is a limit, to fearing none.

If we begin with certainties we will end in doubt. But if we begin with doubts and bear them patiently we may end in certainty.

The surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them.

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

The remedy is worse than the disease.

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.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth.

Opportunity makes a thief.

Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.

People usually think according to their inclinations speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions but generally act according to custom.

The world 's a bubble and the life of man less than a span.

Studies serve for delight for ornament and for ability.

Praise from the common people is generally false and rather follows the vain that the viruous.

Friendship increases in visiting friends but in visiting them seldom.

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

Our humanity were a poor thing were it not for the divinity which stirs within us

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Young men are fitter to invent than to judge fitter for execution than for counsel and fitter for new projects than for settled business.

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

As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen: so are all Innovations which are the births of time.

Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.

For behavior men learn it as they take diseases one of another

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

There is superstition in avoiding superstitions

It is the wisdom of the crocodiles that shed tears when they would devour.

Like the strawberry wives that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot and all the rest were little ones.

To spend too much time in studies is sloth.

It is as natural to die as to be born, and to a little infant perhaps the one is as painful as the other

Things alter for the worse spontaneously if they be not altered for the better designedly.

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

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Philosophy when superficially studied excites doubt, when thoroughly explored it dispels it

[Knowledge is] a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

He said it that knew it best.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity of the New which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God

Many a man's strength is in opposition and when he faileth he groweth out of use

Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man

Seek ye first the good things of the mind and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men.

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.

It is scarcely possible at once to admire and excel an author as water rises no higher than the reservoir it falls from

It is impossible to love and be wise

This delivering of knowledge in distinct and disjointed aphorisms doth leave the wit of man more free to turn and toss and to make use of that which is so delivered to more several purposes and applications

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

If a man's wit be wandering let him study the mathematics.

Money makes a good servant but a bad master.

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.

The worst men often give the best advice.

Words when written crystallize history, their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past

Pyrrhus when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius but with great slaughter of his own side said to them "Yes, but if we have such another victory we are undone

Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.

Science is but an image of the truth.

It's not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong, not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich, not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned, and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

Money is like muck not good except it be spread.

Friendship redoubleth joys and cutteth griefs in half

A prudent question is one half of wisdom.

All things are admired either because they are new or because they are great

Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise the admiration of fools the idols of paradise and the slaves of their own vaunts

Death comes as a heavy blow when known too well to others you die unknown to yourself.

Consistency is the foundation of virtue.

Good fame is like fire, when you have kindled you may easily preserve it, but if you extinguish it you will not easily kindle it again.

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

Houses are built to live in and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

Of great wealth there is no real use except in its distribution the rest is just conceit.

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so, but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.

If we begin with certainties we shall end in doubts, but if we begin with doubts and are patient in them we shall end in certainties.

Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination 1 their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions.

Set it down to thyself as well to create good precedents as to follow them.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind

People of great position are servants times three servants of their country servants of fame and servants of business.

States as great engines move slowly.

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

Atheism leaves a man to sense to philosophy to natural piety to laws to reputation, all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue even if religion vanished, but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy i

If we do not maintain justice justice will not maintain us.

Like strawberry wives that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot and all the rest were little ones.

Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.

Men commonly think according to their inclinations speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions but generally act according to custom

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

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires

The human understanding from its peculiar nature easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds

It was prettily devised of Aesop "The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said what dust do I raise! "

The men of experiment are like the ant they only collect and use, the reasoners resemble spiders who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

Nuptial love makes mankind, friendly love perfects it, but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

A crowd is not company and faces are but a gallery of pictures

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

The poets did well to conjoin Music And Medicine in Apollo: because the office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man's body and to reduce it to harmony.

For knowledge itself is power.

Houses are built to live in and not to look on.

It is not the lie that passeth through the mind but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt

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

My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads.

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.

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences for there is no worse torture than that of laws.

Virtue is like a rich stone - best plain set.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man / Less than a span.

God Almighty first planted a garden.

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.

They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.

Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends but he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend but he grieveth the less.

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self.

Great hypocrite are the real atheists

The light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.

In thinking if a person begins with certainties they shall end in doubts but if they can begin with doubts they will end in certainties.

If any human being earnestly desires to push on to new discoveries instead of just retaining and using the old, to win victories over Nature as a worker rather than over hostile critics as a disputant, to attain in fact clear and demonstrative know

It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

Riches are a good hand maiden but a poor mistress.

Seek not proud wealth, but such as thou mayest get justly use soberly distribute cheerfully and love contentedly

To choose time is to save time.

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

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises either of virtue or mischief.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

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 to them.

Nature to be commanded must be obeyed. In everything man has accomplished we have only manipulated nature into doing what it is.

Come home to men's business and bosoms.

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

He doth like the ape that the higher he clymbes the more he shows his ars

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise

Men in great place are thrice servants - servants of the sovereign or state servants of fame and servants of business.

Fortune makes him fool whom she makes her darling.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

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

Read not to contradict and confute nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.

Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time of course alter things to the worse and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better what shall be the end?.

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him ... when the hill stood still he was never a wit abashed but said 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet Mahomet will go to the hill.'

It was prettily devised of Aesop `The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot-wheel and said What a dust do I raise'.

Knowledge itself is power

There is nothing makes a man suspect much more than to know little and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more and not keep their suspicions in smother.

Knowlege is power.

The joys of parents are secret and so are their grieves and fears.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that lost by not trying.

In contemplation if a man begins with certainties he shall end in doubts, but if he be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

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...

Read not to contradict and confute nor to believe and take for granted but to weigh and consider . . . Histories make men wise.

He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

Oh! death will find me long before I tire of watching you.

A wise man that had it for a by-word when he saw men hasten to a conclusion `Stay a little that we may make an end the sooner'.

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

It is not what men eat but what they digest that makes them strong, not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich, not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned, not what we preach but what we practice that makes us Christians.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous

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

For the world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding (which has been done hitherto) but the understanding is to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world

Custom is the principle magistrate of man's life

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech: `Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god'.

It is natural to die as to be born.

A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding that it can hold men's hearts by hopes when it cannot by satisfaction

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind goodness is the greatest being the character of the Deity, and without it man is a busy mischievous wretched thing.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark, and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales so is the other.

The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men is the vicissitude of sects and religions.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery

Men suppose their reason has command over their words, still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

They that deny a God destroy man's nobility for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body, and if he is not of kin to God by his spirit he is a base and ignoble creature

Natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study, and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large except they be bounded in by experience.

Custom is the principal magistrate of man's life.

The speaking in perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.

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

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to by their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

No man's fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

The mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

Prosperity doth best discover vice but Adversity doth best discover virtue

Prosperity discovers vice adversity discovers virtue.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distaste, adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

The joys of parents are secret and so are their griefs and fears.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.

Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others

The joys of parents are secret and so are their griefs and fears: they cannot utter the one nor will they utter the other

Knowledge is power.