“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
“Come home to men's business and bosoms.”
Source: Essays or Counsels civil and moral
“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
“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
“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
“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”
“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
“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.”
“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
“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
“The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.”
Source: Works of Francis Bacon: 6
“In revenge a man is but even with his enemy; for it is a princely thing to pardon, and Solomon saith it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression.”
“Man was formed for society.”
“For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.”
Source: Lord Bacon's Essays: With a Sketch of His Life and Character, Reviews of His Philosophical Writings, Critical Estimates of His Essays, Analysis, Notes, and Queries for Students, and Select Portions of the ʻAnnotationsʼ of Archbishop Whately
“Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.”
“It is a great happiness when men's professions and their inclinations accord.”
“I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.”
“Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware, that they carry their anger rather with scorn, than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury, than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it.”
Source: Works
“Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.”
Source: The Works...
“There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: A New Edition:
“The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.”
Source: Bacon's Essays: Top Essays
“There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.”
Source: Essays: With Annotations by Richard Whately
“Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.”
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
“Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.”
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
“Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?”
Source: Bacon's Essays: Top Essays
“A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.”
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
“If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.”
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
“But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.”
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
“Men leave their riches either to their kindred or their friends, and moderate portions prosper best in both.”
“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
“I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.”
“A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.”
“A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.”
“In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
“Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.”
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”
“Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.”
“If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.”
Source: A critique of Bacon's
“This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.”
Source: The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban and Lord High Chancellor of England: Sylva sylvarum (century IX-X) Physiological remains. Medical remains. Medical receipts. Works moral: Colours of good and evil. Essays of counsels civil and moral. Theological works
“If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.”
