English philosopher (1561-1626)
Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
FRANCIS BACON
De Augmentis Scientiarum
Chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
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
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.
FRANCIS BACON
Advancement of Learning
It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
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
Good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins them.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
They that deny a God destroy man's nobility, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is superior.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
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.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Nature in Men," Essays
States as great engines move slowly.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Art is man added to Nature.
FRANCIS BACON
Descriptio Globi Intellectus
It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum