Quotes from Francis Bacon

There is superstition in avoiding superstition.

Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the mind of all perbutations?

Fortune is like the market; where many times if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

The productions of the mind and hand seem very numerous in books and manufactures. But all this variety lies in an exquisite subtlety and derivations from a few things already known, not in the number of axioms. VIII

Kendi deÄŸeri olmayan bir insan baÅŸkalar?n?n deÄŸerini hiçbir zaman çekemez. Çünkü insan gönlü, ya kendi üstünlüÄŸünü ya da baÅŸkalar?n?n kötülüÄŸü ile beslenmek ister.

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales

When talking about the violence of paint, it's nothing to do with the violence of war. It's to do with an attempt to remake the violence of reality iteslf.

The honorablest part of talk, is to give the occasion; and again to moderate, and pass to somewhat else; for then a man leads the dance.

There is surely no greater wisdom, than well to time the beginnings, and onsets, of things.

The nature of such controversies is excellently expressed, by St. Paul, in the warning and precept, that he giveth concerning the same, Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae.

Very great, in short, is the prerogative of constitutive instances; for they are of much use in the forming of definitions (especially particular definitions) and in the division and partition of natures; with regard to which it was not ill said by Plato, "That he is to be held as a god who knows well how to define and to divide.

For this is but to dash the first table against the second; and so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that they are men. Lucretius the poet, when he beheld the act of Agamemnon, that could endure the sacrificing of his own daughter, exclaimed: Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum.

What would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in France, or the powder treason of England?

But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God's hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well.

Lastly, concerning the disdain to receive into natural history things either common, or mean, or oversubtle and in their original condition useless, the answer of the poor woman to the haughty prince who had rejected her petition as an unworthy thing and beneath his dignity, may be taken for an oracle: "Then leave off being king." For most certain it is that he who will not attend to things like these as being too paltry and minute, can neither win the kingdom of nature nor govern it.

Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.

It was an high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that the good things, which belong to prosperity, are to be wished; but the good things, that belong to adversity, are to be admired. Bona rerum secundarum optabilia; adversarum mirabilia.

Wherefore you shall observe, that the more deep and sober sort of politic persons, in their greatness, are ever bemoaning themselves, what a life they lead; chanting a quanta patimur! Not that they feel it so, but only to abate the edge of envy.

Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei.

Far more, however, has knowledge suffered from littleness of spirit and the smallness and slightness of the tasks which human industry has proposed to itself.

And inquiries into nature have the best result when they begin with physics and end in mathematics.

Far more, however, has knowledge suffered from littleness of spirit and the smallness and slightness of the tasks which human industry has proposed to itself. And what is worst of all, this very littleness of spirit comes with a certain air of arrogance and superiority.

The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue.

Nevertheless, with regard to philosophies of this kind there is one caution not to be omitted; for I foresee that if ever men are roused by my admonitions to betake themselves seriously to experiment and bid farewell to sophistical doctrines, then indeed through the premature hurry of the understanding to leap or fly to universals and principles of things, great danger may be apprehended from philosophies of this kind, against which evil we ought even now to prepare.