Francis Bacon quotes - page 13

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. (Francis Bacon)
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. View quote
Francis Bacon
Be not penny-wise. Riches have wings. Sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more. View quote
Francis Bacon
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. View quote
Francis Bacon
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. View quote
Francis Bacon
Revenge is a kind of wild justice. View quote
Francis Bacon
The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected. View quote
Francis Bacon
That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain. View quote
Francis Bacon
The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull. View quote
Francis Bacon
There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom. View quote
Francis Bacon
Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit. (Francis Bacon)
Men suppose their reason has command over their words still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason. View quote
Francis Bacon
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. View quote
Francis Bacon
But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain. View quote
Francis Bacon
The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. View quote
Francis Bacon
The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery at first it deceives, at last it betrays. View quote
Francis Bacon
Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self And where there is no comparison, no envy. View quote
Francis Bacon
It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat upon the axletree of the chariot-wheel and said, what a dust do I raise. View quote
Francis Bacon
No man's fortune can be an end worthy of his being. View quote
Francis Bacon
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. View quote
Francis Bacon
It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. (Francis Bacon)
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.' View quote
Francis Bacon
Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts. View quote
Francis Bacon
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. View quote
Francis Bacon
Nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much. View quote
Francis Bacon