Top 500 Francis Bacon Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Laws and Institutions Must Go Hand in Hand with the Progress of the Human Mind.”

— Francis Bacon

102. “If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.”

— Francis Bacon

103. “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”

— Francis Bacon

104. “Secrecy in suits goes a great way towards success.”

— Francis Bacon

105. “Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.”

— Francis Bacon

106. “The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.”

— Francis Bacon

107. “A lie faces God and shrinks from man.”

— Francis Bacon

108. “Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

— Francis Bacon

109. “It’s not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.”

— Francis Bacon

110. “Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.”

— Francis Bacon

111. “The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body and reduce it to harmony.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

113. “In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.”

— Francis Bacon

114. “In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts.”

— Francis Bacon

115. “Friendship redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.”

— Francis Bacon

116. “Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.”

— Francis Bacon

117. “Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.”

— Francis Bacon

118. “The universe must not be narrowed down to the limit of our understanding, but our understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered.”

— Francis Bacon

119. “The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.”

— Francis Bacon

120. “God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.”

— Francis Bacon

121. “Great changes are easier than small ones.”

— Francis Bacon

122. “The light that a man receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comes from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.”

— Francis Bacon

123. “Friendship maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.”

— Francis Bacon

124. “If you can talk about it, why paint it?”

— Francis Bacon

125. “Friends are thieves of time.”

— Francis Bacon

126. “Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.”

— Francis Bacon

127. “He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.”

— Francis Bacon

128. “We must see whether the same clock with weights will go faster at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; it is probable, if the pull of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine, that the earth has real attraction.”

— Francis Bacon

129. “The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.”

— Francis Bacon

130. “In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.”

— Francis Bacon

131. “There was a young man in Rome that was very like Augustus Caesar; Augustus took knowledge of it and sent for the man, and asked him “Was your mother never at Rome?” He answered “No Sir; but my father was.””

— Francis Bacon

132. “When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others.”

— Francis Bacon

133. “In charity there is no excess.”

— Francis Bacon

134. “We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.”

— Francis Bacon

135. “Cure the disease and kill the patient.”

— Francis Bacon

136. “The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.”

— Francis Bacon

137. “Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.”

— Francis Bacon

138. “There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.”

— Francis Bacon

139. “Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.”

— Francis Bacon

140. “It’s all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary.”

— Francis Bacon

141. “Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of the artist’s mood. But it rarely is. Very often he may be in greatest despair and be painting his happiest paintings.”

— Francis Bacon

142. “Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.”

— Francis Bacon

143. “The place of justice is a hallowed place.”

— Francis Bacon

144. “Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.”

— Francis Bacon

145. “There are many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.”

— Francis Bacon

146. “The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes the wrong one.”

— Francis Bacon

147. “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.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

149. “To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.”

— Francis Bacon

150. “All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.”

— Francis Bacon