Top 500 Francis Bacon Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.”

— Francis Bacon

52. “Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.”

— Francis Bacon

53. “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

55. “For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike.”

— Francis Bacon

56. “Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.”

— Francis Bacon

57. “If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.”

— Francis Bacon

58. “Truth is a naked and open daylight.”

— Francis Bacon

59. “Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow.”

— Francis Bacon

60. “There is superstition in avoiding superstition.”

— Francis Bacon

61. “A bachelor’s life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.”

— Francis Bacon

62. “The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel.”

— Francis Bacon

63. “For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”

— Francis Bacon

64. “Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”

— Francis Bacon

65. “Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.”

— Francis Bacon

66. “Art is man added to Nature.”

— Francis Bacon

67. “It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”

— Francis Bacon

68. “Half of science is putting forth the right questions.”

— Francis Bacon

69. “A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.”

— Francis Bacon

70. “The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.”

— Francis Bacon

71. “Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees...”

— Francis Bacon

72. “In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.”

— Francis Bacon

73. “Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.”

— Francis Bacon

74. “Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.”

— Francis Bacon

75. “A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.”

— Francis Bacon

76. “The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.”

— Francis Bacon

77. “Parents who wish to train up their children in the way they should go must go in the way in which they would have their children go.”

— Francis Bacon

78. “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”

— Francis Bacon

79. “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”

— Francis Bacon

80. “Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.”

— Francis Bacon

81. “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.’”

— Francis Bacon

82. “Silence is the virtue of fools.”

— Francis Bacon

83. “The folly of one man is the fortune of another.”

— Francis Bacon

84. “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.”

— Francis Bacon

85. “They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”

— Francis Bacon

86. “It is impossible to love and to be wise.”

— Francis Bacon

87. “It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.”

— Francis Bacon

88. “When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting.”

— Francis Bacon

89. “A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.”

— Francis Bacon

90. “Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.”

— Francis Bacon

91. “There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.”

— Francis Bacon

92. “Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.”

— Francis Bacon

93. “As is the garden such is the gardener. A man’s nature runs either to herbs or weeds.”

— Francis Bacon

94. “It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.”

— Francis Bacon

95. “There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

97. “God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”

— Francis Bacon

98. “We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.”

— Francis Bacon

99. “The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.”

— Francis Bacon

100. “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.”

— Francis Bacon