Top 500 Francis Bacon Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.”

— Francis Bacon

402. “It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.”

— Francis Bacon

403. “There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.”

— Francis Bacon

404. “There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.”

— Francis Bacon

405. “God’s first creature, which was light.”

— Francis Bacon

406. “Fortune makes him fool, whom she makes her darling.”

— Francis Bacon

407. “Riches are for spending.”

— Francis Bacon

408. “But the images of men’s wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.”

— Francis Bacon

409. “Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.”

— Francis Bacon

410. “Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.”

— Francis Bacon

411. “The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.”

— Francis Bacon

412. “There is a cunning which we in England call “the turning of the cat” in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him.”

— Francis Bacon

413. “For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.”

— Francis Bacon

414. “Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.”

— Francis Bacon

415. “Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.”

— Francis Bacon

416. “Knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent, and therefore where it entereth into a man it makes him swell.”

— Francis Bacon

417. “Nothing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men out of the Church, as breach of unity.”

— Francis Bacon

418. “I have to hope that my instincts will do the right thing, because I can’t erase what I have done. And if I drew something first, then my paintings would be illustrations of drawings.”

— Francis Bacon

419. “Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.”

— Francis Bacon

420. “Whatever you can, count.”

— Francis Bacon

421. “It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.”

— Francis Bacon

422. “You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint.”

— Francis Bacon

423. “He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry? ‘A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.’”

— Francis Bacon

424. “A cat will never drown if she sees the shore.”

— Francis Bacon

425. “One always starts work with the subject, no matter how tenuous it is, and one constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter that one has started from.”

— Francis Bacon

426. “So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top.”

— Francis Bacon

427. “In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.”

— Francis Bacon

428. “Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.”

— Francis Bacon

429. “Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.”

— Francis Bacon

430. “That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.”

— Francis Bacon

431. “There are Idols which we call Idols of the Market. For Men associate by Discourse, and a false and improper Imposition of Words strangely possesses the Understanding, for Words absolutely force the Understanding, and put all Things into Confusion.”

— Francis Bacon

432. “Great riches have sold more men than they have bought.”

— Francis Bacon

433. “I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance.”

— Francis Bacon

434. “Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.”

— Francis Bacon

435. “I don’t believe art is available; it’s rare and curious and should be completely isolated; one is more aware of its magic the more it is isolated.”

— Francis Bacon

436. “They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.”

— Francis Bacon

437. “He that cometh to seek after knowledge, with a mind to scorn, shall be sure to find matter for his humour, but no matter for his instruction.”

— Francis Bacon

438. “Man was formed for society.”

— Francis Bacon

439. “If my people look as if they’re in a dreadful fix, it’s because I can’t get them out of a technical dilemma.”

— Francis Bacon

440. “I want to make portraits and images. I don’t know how. Out of despair, I just use paint anyway. Suddenly the things you make coagulate and take on just the shape you intend. Totally accurate marks, which are outside representational marks.”

— Francis Bacon

441. “I don’t think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck.”

— Francis Bacon

442. “The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.”

— Francis Bacon

443. “Brutes by their natural instinct have produced many discoveries, whereas men by discussion and the conclusions of reason have given birth to few or none.”

— Francis Bacon

444. “Vices of the time; vices of the man.”

— Francis Bacon

445. “Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.”

— Francis Bacon

446. “Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.”

— Francis Bacon

447. “Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.”

— Francis Bacon

448. “It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one.”

— Francis Bacon

449. “If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.”

— Francis Bacon

450. “The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.”

— Francis Bacon