“Defer not charities till death; for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own.”
“Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.”
Source: The works
“The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.”
Source: A harmony of the essays, etc. of Francis Bacon
“Consistency is the foundation of virtue.”
“Rather to excite your judgment briefly than to inform it tediously.”
Source: The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon Including All His Occasional Works: Namely Letters, Speeches, Tracts, State Papers, Memorials, Devices and All Authentic Writings Not Already Printed Among His Philosophical, Literary, Or Professional Works
“Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone."”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: With a Life of the Author
“What, then, remains but that we still should cry, For being born, and, being born, to die?”
“It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!”
Source: The Essays Or Counsels, Civil and Moral
“There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.”
Source: Francisci Baconi Baronis de Verulamio ... Opera Omnia Quatuor Voluminibus Comprehensa: Containing, I. His Natural history. II. Physiological and medical remains. III. The new Atlantis. IV. His Apothegms. V. Essays. VI. Colours of good and evil. VII. History of the reign of Henry VII. VIII. History of Henry VIII. IX. Beginning of the history of Great Britain. X. Of a war with Spain. XI. Of an holy war. XII. The history of the office of alienations. XIII. Advice to the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Geor
“They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.”
Source: The Major Works
“Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon: Translations of the philosophical works
“We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?”
Source: The Advancement of Learning
“Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs: for occasions have their revolutions, and what has once been advantageously used may be so again, either as an old thing or a new one.”
Source: Advancement of Learning: And Novum Organum
“Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii: when industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: A New Edition:
“That which above all other yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England: In Five Volumes
“Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection.”
“The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course, it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.”
“The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.”
“By indignities men come to dignities.”
“Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.”
Source: Essays, moral, economical and political. With a memoir of the author
“He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Lord High Chancellor of England ...: With Several Additional Pieces, Never Before Printed in Any Edition of His Works. To which is Prefixed, a New Life of the Author
“I hold every man a debtor to his profession.”
“The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.”
“There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little, and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not keep their suspicions in smother.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Lord High Chancellor of England ...: With Several Additional Pieces, Never Before Printed in Any Edition of His Works. To which is Prefixed, a New Life of the Author
“The colors that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green.”
Source: Essays: Or Counsels, Civil and Moral
“Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.”
Source: Essays
“Perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.”
Source: Essays: With Annotations by Richard Whately
“He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.”
Source: The Moral and Historical Works of Lord Bacon: Including His Essays, Apophthegms, Wisdom of the Ancients, New Atlantis, and Life of Henry the Seventh
“... wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.”
“States, as great engines, move slowly.”
Source: Works of Francis Bacon: 3
“It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“Wounds cannot be cured without searching.”
Source: A Harmony of the Essays: Etc
“Disciples do owe their masters only a temporary belief, and a suspension of their own judgment till they be fully instructed.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England: In Five Volumes
“Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.”
“A lie faces God and shrinks from man.”
Source: The Essays of Lord Bacon
“Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.”
Source: Bacon's Essays
“If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England: In Five Volumes
“There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.”
Source: Works of Francis Bacon: 6
“In all superstition wise men follow fools.”
“There is superstition in avoiding superstition.”
“There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.”
Source: The Essays of Lord Bacon
“Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“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.”
Source: Essays
“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.”
“The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.”
Source: Essays
“Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.”
Source: The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon Including All His Occasional Works: Namely Letters, Speeches, Tracts, State Papers, Memorials, Devices and All Authentic Writings Not Already Printed Among His Philosophical, Literary, Or Professional Works
“Truth is a naked and open daylight”
Source: Bacon's Essays
“Friends are thieves of time.”
Source: Philosophical works
“Be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others.”
