English philosopher (1561-1626)
The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
Knowledge is power.
FRANCIS BACON
Meditationes Sacrae
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.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral
Libraries ... are as the shrines where all the relics of ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays Or Counsels
All colours will agree in the dark.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Riches are for spending.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
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?
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays