Quotes from Francis Bacon

Nupital love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, and embaseth it.

Men in great place are thrice servants, servants to the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business, so as they have freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.

Solomon saith, 'He that considereth the wind, shall not sow, and he that looketh to the clouds, shall not reap.' A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.

The punishing of wits enhances their authority.

for it is very probable, that the motion of gravity worketh weakly, both far from the earth, and also within the earth: the former because the appetite of union of dense bodies with the earth, in respect of the distance, is more dull: the latter, because the body hath in part attained its nature when it is some depth in the earth. { Foreshadowing Isaac Newton 's Universal Law of Gravitation (1687)}

the specious meditations, speculations, and theories of mankind are but a kind of insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it.

The lame (as they say) in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it, and it is clear that the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not in the right direction must increase his aberration.

A man would die, though he were neither valiant, nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft, over and over.

It is not the lie that passes through the mind, but the lie that sinks in and settles in it, that does the hurt.

If a book is not worth reading twice, it is not worth reading once.

Whoseoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Certain it is that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment.

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.

If you are not happy for a minute, then you lost 60 seconds of happiness in your life

it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives; whereas it ought properly to hold itself indifferently disposed towards both alike.

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 some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, and cities have been decayed and demolished?

La lectura hace al hombre completo; la conversación, ágil, y el escribir, preciso".

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

A la naturaleza se le domina obedeciendola.

It is a poore Center of a Mans Actions, Himselfe.

This communicating of a Man's Selfe to his Frend works two contrarie effects; for it re-doubleth Joys, and cutteth Griefs in halves.

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.

Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?