Quotes from Francis Bacon

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

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.

It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.

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

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

Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs: for occasions have their revolutions, and what has once been advantageously used may be so again, either as an old thing or a new one.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

Time, which is the author of authors.

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

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

Truth will sooner come out of error than from confusion.

There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms… this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.

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

A good name is like a precious ointment; it filleth all around about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

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

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

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.

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

When he wrote a letter, he would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a by-matter.

Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii: when industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that traveleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

But as young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a further stature, so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth: but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance, be further polished and illustrate and accommodated for use and practice; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance.