Top 500 Francis Bacon Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.”

— Francis Bacon

452. “Defer not charities till death; for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man’s than of his own.”

— Francis Bacon

453. “That which above all other yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

455. “It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one.”

— Francis Bacon

456. “The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.”

— Francis Bacon

457. “If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.”

— Francis Bacon

458. “The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.”

— Francis Bacon

459. “Medical men do not know the drugs they use, nor their prices.”

— Francis Bacon

460. “For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.”

— Francis Bacon

461. “All bravery stands upon comparisons.”

— Francis Bacon

462. “They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.”

— Francis Bacon

463. “Man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over nature. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences.”

— Francis Bacon

464. “The images of mens wits and knowledge remain in books. They generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages.”

— Francis Bacon

465. “As you work, the mood grows on you. There are certain images which suddenly get hold of me and I really want to do them. But it’s true to say that the excitement and possibilities are in the working and obviously can only come in the working.”

— Francis Bacon

466. “Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.”

— Francis Bacon

467. “Every person born in the USA is endowed with life, liberty, and a substantial share of the national debt.”

— Francis Bacon

468. “It’s always hopeless to talk about painting – one never does anything but talk around it.”

— Francis Bacon

469. “It is a great happiness when men’s professions and their inclinations accord.”

— Francis Bacon

470. “If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.”

— Francis Bacon

471. “Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.”

— Francis Bacon

472. “For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.”

— Francis Bacon

473. “There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.”

— Francis Bacon

474. “Spouses are great impediments to great enterprises.”

— Francis Bacon

475. “The punishing of wits enhances their authority.”

— Francis Bacon

476. “Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly.”

— Francis Bacon

477. “It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

479. “Rather to excite your judgment briefly than to inform it tediously.”

— Francis Bacon

480. “Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, “Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone.””

— Francis Bacon

481. “In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.”

— Francis Bacon

482. “The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship.”

— Francis Bacon

483. “He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another’s.”

— Francis Bacon

484. “Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was invented.”

— Francis Bacon

485. “Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.”

— Francis Bacon

486. “Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.”

— Francis Bacon

487. “All will come out in the washing.”

— Francis Bacon

488. “I work for posterity, these things requiring ages for their accomplishment.”

— Francis Bacon

489. “I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.”

— Francis Bacon

490. “They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art.”

— Francis Bacon

491. “Lukewarm persons think they may accommodate points of religion by middle ways and witty reconcilements, – as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man.”

— Francis Bacon

492. “The natures and dispositions of men are, not without truth, distinguished from the predominance of the planets.”

— Francis Bacon

493. “Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

495. “Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest.”

— Francis Bacon

496. “We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to God above, who “showeth His wonders in the deep”.”

— Francis Bacon

497. “For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.”

— Francis Bacon

498. “Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.”

— Francis Bacon

499. “More dangers have deceived men than forced them.”

— Francis Bacon

500. “Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.”

— Francis Bacon