Top 500 Francis Bacon Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.”

— Francis Bacon

152. “This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.”

— Francis Bacon

153. “Praise is the reflection of virtue.”

— Francis Bacon

154. “God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.”

— Francis Bacon

155. “The wisdom of the ancients.”

— Francis Bacon

156. “God loveth the clean.”

— Francis Bacon

157. “Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.”

— Francis Bacon

158. “I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.”

— Francis Bacon

159. “Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.”

— Francis Bacon

160. “A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.”

— Francis Bacon

161. “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

— Francis Bacon

162. “We only have our nervous system to paint.”

— Francis Bacon

163. “Innovations, which are the births of time.”

— Francis Bacon

164. “The mold of our fortunes is in our own hands.”

— Francis Bacon

165. “To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.”

— Francis Bacon

166. “Come home to men’s business and bosoms.”

— Francis Bacon

167. “I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

169. “Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”

— Francis Bacon

170. “Always let losers have their words.”

— Francis Bacon

171. “A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.”

— Francis Bacon

172. “The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.”

— Francis Bacon

173. “To spend too much time in studies is sloth.”

— Francis Bacon

174. “A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made.”

— Francis Bacon

175. “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

176. “It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.”

— Francis Bacon

177. “If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.”

— Francis Bacon

178. “Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.”

— Francis Bacon

179. “Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.”

— Francis Bacon

180. “The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.”

— Francis Bacon

181. “No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.”

— Francis Bacon

182. “In all superstition wise men follow fools.”

— Francis Bacon

183. “Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.”

— Francis Bacon

184. “Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns the water, or but writes in dust.”

— Francis Bacon

185. “When any of the four pillars of government-religion, justice, counsel, and treasure-are mainly shaken or weakened, men had need to pray for fair weather.”

— Francis Bacon

186. “A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.”

— Francis Bacon

187. “It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.”

— Francis Bacon

188. “The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.”

— Francis Bacon

189. “The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.”

— Francis Bacon

190. “There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.”

— Francis Bacon

191. “Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.”

— Francis Bacon

192. “Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.”

— Francis Bacon

193. “God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.”

— Francis Bacon

194. “Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature; but unskillfully and unmethodically depicted, it will be as it were an ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.”

— Francis Bacon

195. “The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness.”

— Francis Bacon

196. “It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.”

— Francis Bacon

197. “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.”

— Francis Bacon

198. “Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?”

— Francis Bacon

199. “Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.”

— Francis Bacon

200. “But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this-that men despair and think things impossible.”

— Francis Bacon