Top 500 Francis Bacon Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.”

— Francis Bacon

302. “The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.”

— Francis Bacon

303. “Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise. For the distance is altered, and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.”

— Francis Bacon

304. “Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.”

— Francis Bacon

305. “The only really interesting thing is what happens between two people in a room.”

— Francis Bacon

306. “No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years before the thing begins to sort itself out.”

— Francis Bacon

307. “There was never miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to confess a God.”

— Francis Bacon

308. “We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.”

— Francis Bacon

309. “If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the well-being of Church and State.”

— Francis Bacon

310. “It was well said that envy keeps no holidays.”

— Francis Bacon

311. “The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this-that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.”

— Francis Bacon

312. “Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.”

— Francis Bacon

313. “A man were better relate himself to a statue or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.”

— Francis Bacon

314. “Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb; Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch, Till the white-wing’d reapers come.”

— Francis Bacon

315. “Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.”

— Francis Bacon

316. “Be not penny-wise. Riches have wings. Sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

318. “Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.”

— Francis Bacon

319. “The divisions of science are not like different lines that meet in one angle, but rather like the branches of trees that join in one trunk.”

— Francis Bacon

320. “Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.”

— Francis Bacon

321. “It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.”

— Francis Bacon

322. “Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them.”

— Francis Bacon

323. “Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.”

— Francis Bacon

324. “It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.”

— Francis Bacon

325. “The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.”

— Francis Bacon

326. “I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, “Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.””

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

328. “But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness.”

— Francis Bacon

329. “Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.”

— Francis Bacon

330. “Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother.”

— Francis Bacon

331. “I usually accept bribes from both sides so that tainted money can never influence my decision.”

— Francis Bacon

332. “Velazquez found the perfect balance between the ideal illustration which he was required to produce, and the overwhelming emotion he aroused in the spectator.”

— Francis Bacon

333. “Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down.”

— Francis Bacon

334. “There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.”

— Francis Bacon

335. “Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.”

— Francis Bacon

336. “Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.”

— Francis Bacon

337. “There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.”

— Francis Bacon

338. “The errors of young men are the ruin of business, but the errors of aged men amount to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.”

— Francis Bacon

339. “Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.”

— Francis Bacon

340. “I think of myself as a kind of pulverizing machine into which everything I look at and feel is fed. I believe that I am different from the mixed-media jackdaws who use photographs etc. more or less literally.”

— Francis Bacon

341. “Jesus would have been one of the best photographers that ever existed. He was always looking at the beauty of people souls. In fact Jesus was constantly making pictures of God in people’s life by looking at their souls and exposing them to his light.”

— Francis Bacon

342. “Perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

344. “Nothing is to be feared but fear.”

— Francis Bacon

345. “I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.”

— Francis Bacon

346. “The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance – if it is not irrational, you make illustration.”

— Francis Bacon

347. “For fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pools mar all, and make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs.”

— Francis Bacon

348. “He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.”

— Francis Bacon

349. “Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.”

— Francis Bacon

350. “He who desires solitude is either an animal or a god.”

— Francis Bacon