Quotes by Francis Bacon

A man dies as often as he loses his friends.

The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure, its a little like making love, the physical act of love.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

mans sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.

God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it… There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man’s observation, what he finds good and of what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

by indignities men come to dignities

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

It is a poore Center of a Mans Actions, Himselfe.

It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, — ‘Aye,’ asked he again, ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?’ And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by.

Look upon good books; they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself...and you shall need no other comfort nor counsel.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of mans body and reduce it to harmony.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.