A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
– Sir Francis Bacon
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
– Sir Francis Bacon
If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be
said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Knowledge is power.
– Sir Francis Bacon
The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Riches are for spending.
– Sir Francis Bacon
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
– Sir Francis Bacon
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin
with doubts he shall end in certainties.
– Sir Francis Bacon
In charity there is no excess.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Chiefly the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep;
moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
– Sir Francis Bacon
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
– Sir Francis Bacon
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 to them.
– Sir Francis Bacon
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s
minds about to religion.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a aprt of experience. He that
traveleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school,
and not to travel.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Virtue is like precious odors – most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and
digested.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to
weed it out.
– Sir Francis Bacon
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest
innovator.
– Sir Francis Bacon
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
– Sir Francis Bacon
A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.
– Sir Francis Bacon
The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and
discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
– Sir Francis Bacon
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
– Sir Francis Bacon
There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost
by not trying.
– Sir Francis Bacon
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
– Sir Francis Bacon
In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and
seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of
success.
– Sir Francis Bacon, The Essays: Or Counsels, Civil and Moral
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.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in
four things – old wood best to burn, old wine best to drink, old friends to trust, and old
authors to read.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
– Sir Francis Bacon
A good name is like a precious ointment; it filleth all around about, and will not easily away;
for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
– Sir Francis Bacon
There is a cunning which we in England call “the turning of the cat in the pan;” which is, when
that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him.
– Sir Francis Bacon
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art. The job
of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.
– Sir Francis Bacon
All good moral philosophy is but the handmaid to religion.
– Sir Francis Bacon
I have taken all knowledge to be my province.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Poesy was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and
erect the mind by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that “We read that we
ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.”
– Sir Francis Bacon