Quotes from Francis Bacon

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.

A small task if it be really daily will beat the efforts of a spasmodic Hercules.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

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

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

It Is The Wisdom Of Crocodiles, That Shed Tears When They Would Devour

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

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?

Aristippus said: That those that studied particular sciences, and neglected philosophy, were like Penelope's wooers, that made love to the waiting women.

Worthy books are not companions - they are solitudes: we lose ourselves in them and all our cares

All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.

The folly of one man is the fortune of another.

God has two textbooks - Scripture and Creation - we would do well to listen to both.

For better it is to make a beginning of that which may lead to something, than to engage in a perpetual struggle and pursuit in courses which have no exit.

I would by all means have men beware, lest Aesop 's pretty fable of the fly that sate on the pole of a chariot at the Olympic races and said, 'What a dust do I raise,' be verified in them. For so it is that some small observation, and that disturbed sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by the eye, sometimes by the calculation, and which may be owing to some real change in the sky, raises new skies and new spheres and circles.

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.

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

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many.

Where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

So if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.  And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. 

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