Quotes from Francis Bacon

To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: 'Be angry, but sin not.' 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.'

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.

Money is like muck, not good unless spread.

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.

Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.

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

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

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

Some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you the story in a long diatribe through the brain.

It's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.

Be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others.

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

Silence is the virtue of fools.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

Friends are thieves of time.

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.