“I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.”
Source: フランシス・ベーコン
“Come home to men's business and bosoms.”
Source: Essays or Counsels civil and moral
“They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.”
“First therefore let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are revealed to man and may be observed with sobriety; wherein we may not seek it by the name of Learning; for all Learning is Knowledge acquired, and all Knowledge in God is original: and therefore we must look for it by another name, that of Wisdom or Sapience, as the Scriptures call it.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“The essential form of knowledge... is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.”
Source: The works
“But we are not dedicating or building any Capitol or Pyramid to human Pride, but found a holy temple in the human Intellect, on the model of the Universe... For whatever is worthy of Existence is worthy of Knowledge-which is the Image (or Echo) of Existence.”
Source: Francisci BAconi de Verulamio, ...: Novum organum, sive Indicia vera de interpretatione naturæ
“My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is the double of that which is.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England
“Lastly, I would address one general admonition to all: that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things: but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity.”
Source: Selected Philosophical Works
“The true bounds and limitations, whereby human knowledge is confined and circumscribed,... are three: the first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality: the second, that we make application of our knowledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distates or repining: the third, that we do not presume by the contemplation of Nature to attain to the mysteries of God.”
“Upon a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures is the work and aim of human power. To discover the Form of a given nature, or its true difference, or its causal nature, or fount of its emanation... this is the work and aim of human knowledge.”
Source: The Novum Organon,: Or a True Guide to the Interpretation of Nature
“It is rightly laid down that 'true knowledge is knowledge by causes'. Also the establishment of four causes is not bad: material, formal, efficient and final.”
Source: The Novum Organon,: Or a True Guide to the Interpretation of Nature
“In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.”
Source: Philosophical works
“But this is that which will dignify and exalt knowledge: if contemplation and action be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been: a conjunction like unto that of the highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.”
Source: Bacon's Advancement of Learning and the New Atlantis
“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.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“By this means we presume we have established for ever, a true and legitimate marriage between the Empirical and Rational faculty; whose fastidious and unfortunate divorce and separation hath troubled and disordered the whole race and generation of mankind.”
“I work for posterity, these things requiring ages for their accomplishment.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon
“An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.”
“You can't be more horrific than life itself.”
“Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow.”
“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”
“I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance.”
Source: Francis Bacon, recent paintings, 1968-1974: March 20-Jun 29, 1975, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York : [catalog].
“You want accuracy, but not representation. If you know how to make the figuration, it doesn't work. Anything you can make, you make by accident. In painting, you have to know what you do, not how, when you do it.”
“Lukewarm persons think they may accommodate points of religion by middle ways and witty reconcilements,--as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man.”
Source: The Works of Lord Bacon: With an Introductory Essay
“All authority must be out of a man's self, turned . . . either upon an art, or upon a man.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England: In Five Volumes
“But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.”
Source: The philosophical works of Francis Bacon, with prefaces and notes by the late Robert Leslie Ellis, together with English translations of the principal Latin pieces
“He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.”
“I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him. If I do grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.”
“God loveth the clean.”
“Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.”
“For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves.”
Source: Works of Francis Bacon: 3
“All will come out in the washing.”
“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.”
“The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness.”
“It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.”
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
“Custom is the principle magistrate of man's life.”
“There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.”
“It was well said that envy keeps no holidays.”
“That conceit, elegantly expressed by the Emperor Charles V., in his instructions to the King, his son, "that fortune hath somewhat the nature of a woman, that if she be too much wooed she is the farther off.”
Source: Bacon's Advancement of Learning and the New Atlantis
“Fortune makes him fool, whom she makes her darling.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon
“Mark what a generosity and courage (a dog) will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a God”
Source: Bacon's Essays: Top Essays
“So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top.”
“States are great engines moving slowly.”
“All the crimes on earth do not destroy so many of the human race nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.”
“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.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.”
Source: Bacon's Essays: Top Essays
“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.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England: In Five Volumes
“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.”
Source: Francisci Baconi Baronis de Verulamio ... Opera Omnia Quatuor Voluminibus Comprehensa: Containing, I. Proposition for compiling and amendment of our laws. II. Offer of a digest of the laws. III. Elements, or, Maxims and use of the common law. IV. Cases of treason. V. Four arguments in law ... VI. Draught of an act. VII. Ordinances in chancery. VIII. Reading on the statute of uses. IX. Resuscitatio ... X. Charges. XI. Speeches. XII. Observations on a libel, &c. XIII. Report of Lopez's treason. XI
“Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.”
“He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.”
Source: Bacon's Essays: Top Essays
“Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
