Beth > Beth's Quotes

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
― Francis Bacon

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
― Francis Bacon

“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
― Francis Bacon

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake...”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“Money is a great servant but a bad master.”
― Francis Bacon

“Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.”
― Francis Bacon

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
― Francis Bacon

“Ipsa scientia potestas est.

Knowledge itself is power.”
― Francis Bacon, Meditations Sacrae and Human Philosophy

“It is impossible to love and be wise.”
― Francis Bacon

“In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.”
― Francis Bacon

“There are two ways of spreading light..to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
― Francis Bacon

“The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.”
― Francis Bacon

“If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted”
― Francis Bacon

“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
― Francis Bacon

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.”
― Francis Bacon

“The only really interesting thing is
what happens between two people in a room.”
― Francis Bacon

“Silence is the virtue of fools.”
― Francis Bacon

“Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“There Are But Two Tragedies in Life-One is One's Inability to attain One's Heart's Desire-The Other Is To Have It!”
― Francis Bacon

“Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.”
― Francis Bacon

“Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“Knowledge is power.”
― Sir Francis Bacon, The History of the Reign of King Henry VII

“To conclude, therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficience in both; only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and again, that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together.”
― Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon IV: The Advancement of Learning

“The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And 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.”
― Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”
― Francis Bacon

“A Man must make his opportunity,as oft as find it ”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon

“Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.”
― Francis Bacon

“If a man is gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world.”
― Francis Bacon

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”
― Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon IV: The Advancement of Learning