Quotes by Francis Bacon

Now therefore we come to that third sort of discredit or diminution of credit that groweth unto learning from learned men themselves, which commonly cleaveth fastest: it is either from their fortune, or from their manners, or from the nature of their studies. For the first, it is not in their power; and the second is accidental; the third only is proper to be handled; but because we are not in hand with true measure, but with popular estimation and conceit, it is not amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. The derogations therefore which grow to learning from the fortune or condion of learned men, are either in respect of scarcity of means, or in respect of privateness of life and meanness of employments.

The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.

Those herbs which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but, being trodden upon and crushed, are three; that is, burnet, wild thyme and watermints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.

In charity there is no excess.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.

It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."

It would be 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.

There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.