Top 500 Francis Bacon Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “It was well said that envy keeps no holidays.”

— Francis Bacon

302. “Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.”

— Francis Bacon

303. “Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

305. “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

306. “Acorns were good until bread was found.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— 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. “Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

312. “Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.”

— Francis Bacon

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

320. “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

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

324. “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

325. “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

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. “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

328. “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

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

— Francis Bacon

330. “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

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

— Francis Bacon

332. “Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

337. “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

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

— Francis Bacon

339. “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

340. “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

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

— Francis Bacon

342. “He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”

— Francis Bacon

343. “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

344. “Books speak plain when counselors blanch.”

— Francis Bacon

345. “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

346. “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

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

— Francis Bacon

348. “Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon