Francis Bacon

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.

Measure not dispatch by the time of sitting but by the advancement of business

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

Time is the measure of business.

Nakedness is uncomely as well in mind as body and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.

If thou would'st have that stream of hard-earn'd knowledge of Wisdom heaven-born remain sweet running waters thou should'st not leave it to become a stagnant pond.

It is a secret both in nature and state that it is safer to change many things than one.

Age will not be defied.

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 endeavour themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto.

It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune favor opportunity death of others occasion fitting virtue, but chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again, and when the hill stood still he was never a whit abashed but said 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet Mahomet will go to the hill'.

I have often thought upon death and I find it the least of all evils.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

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 in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

I have taken all knowledge to be my province

I will never be an old man. To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.

If a man look sharply and attentively he shall see Fortune, for though she is blind she is not invisible.

Man prefers to think what he prefers to be true

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

Out of monuments names words proverbs traditions private records and evidences fragments of stories passages of books and the like we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time

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

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

Nature is commanded by obeying her.

No man is angry that feels not himself hurt

The best preservative to keep the mind on health is the faithful admonition of a friend.

There are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open

He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry? 'A young man not yet an elder man not at all

Habit if wisely and skillfully formed becomes truly a second nature, but unskillfully and unmethodically depicted it will be as it were an ape of nature which imitates nothing to the life but only clumsily and awkwardly

Man seeketh in society comfort use and protection

Riches are a good handmaiden but the worst mistress.

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

There is little friendship in the world and least of all between equals.

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.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation

It hath been an opinion that the French are wiser than they seem and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are, but howsoever it be between nations certainly it is so between man and man

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

In civil business, what first? Boldness, what second and third? Boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

Surely every medicine is an innovation and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

I would live to study and not study to live

In things that a man would not be seen in himself it is a point of cunning to borrow the name of the world, as to say "The world says " or "There is a speech abroad."

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.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, adversity not without many comforts and hopes

For none deny there is a God but those for whom it maketh that there were no God.

Such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments or the like, wherein men having a delight in such vanities mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail though this happen much oftener.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

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

Money is like manure of very little use except it be spread.

The sun which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.

Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.

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

There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.

Nothing is terrible except fear itself.

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

It is good discretion not to make too much of any man at the first, because one cannot hold out that proportion

Nay number itself in armies importeth not much where the people is of weak courage, for as Virgil saith "It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be

People have discovered that they can fool the devil, but they can't fool the neighbors.

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

A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.

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.

What then remains but that we still should cry for being born and being born to die?

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Sacred and inspired divinity the sabaoth and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

That things are changed and that nothing really perishes and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same is sufficiently certain.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

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 a flatterer.

All colors will agree in the dark.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self, and where there is no comparison no envy.

Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with will make you lose your way.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

Study After Velasquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X

Houses are built to live in not to look on, therefore let use be preferred before uniformity except where both may be had

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear, and yet that commonly is the case of kings

Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.

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.

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

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.

Truth is a good dog, but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Virtue is like precious odours - most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

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

What is it then to have or have no wife / But single thraldom or a double strife?

Silence is the virtue of fools.

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

Reading maketh a full man.

In nature things move violently to their place and calmly in their place

In superstition wise men follow fools

The way of fortune is like the milky way in the sky, which is a number of smaller stars not seen asunder but giving light together, so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues or rather faculties and customs that make men fortunate.