Quotes from Francis Bacon

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

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

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

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

In revenge a man is but even with his enemy; for it is a princely thing to pardon, and Solomon saith it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression.

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

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.

If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.

A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

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

Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise. For the distance is altered, and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.

Great riches have sold more men than they have bought.

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

In mathematics I can report no deficiency, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of Pure Mathematics.

One of the fathers saith . . . that old men go to death, and death comes to young men.

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

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

Medical men do not know the drugs they use, nor their prices.

Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?

Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.

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

I knew 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."

Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further.

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.