Francis Bacon quotes:

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.

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

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

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

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

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small 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.

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

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

The worst men often give the best advice.

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.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Knowledge is power.

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

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.

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

The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.

Anger is certainly a kind of baseness, as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns: children, women, old folks, sick folks.

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

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

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

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

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

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

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

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.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

God's first creature, which was light.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

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

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

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

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

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

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

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

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

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

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

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

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

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

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

It is natural to die as to be born.

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

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men-the master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.

It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.

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

There was a young man in Rome that was very like Augustus Caesar; Augustus took knowledge of it and sent for the man, and asked him "Was your mother never at Rome?" He answered "No Sir; but my father was."

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

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure

The colors that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green.

The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness.

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

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

He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.

He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

Aristotle... a mere bond-servant to his logic, thereby rendering it contentious and well nigh useless.

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

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

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.

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

A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.

For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others.

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.

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...

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

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

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.

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

There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.

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.

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.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

[Science is] the labor and handicraft of the mind.

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

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

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

I like, you may say, the glitter and colour that comes from the mouth, and I've always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.

I have to hope that my instincts will do the right thing, because I can't erase what I have done. And if I drew something first, then my paintings would be illustrations of drawings.

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections... What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

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

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

The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance - if it is not irrational, you make illustration.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow.

Some artists leave remarkable things which, a 100 years later, don't work at all. I have left my mark; my work is hung in museums, but maybe one day the Tate Gallery or the other museums will banish me to the cellar... you never know.

The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.

Lukewarm persons think they may accommodate points of religion by middle ways and witty reconcilements,--as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man.