Quotes from Francis Bacon

Friends are thieves of time.

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

He that commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.

Virtue is like precious odors—most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

Lucid intervals and happy pauses.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

God Almighty first planted a garden.

Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?

There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names—calling the first class, Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.

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

A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time.

I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defense. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.

A healthy body is the guest-chamber of the soul; a sick, its prison.

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

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

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

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

It [Poesy] was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind.

What then remains but that we still should cryFor being born, and, being born, to die?

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.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

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