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Francis Bacon Quotes - Page 23

All Quotes Accidents Adversity Affection Age Anger Appearance Art Atheism Atheist Authority Beauty Belief Birth Business Change Character Charity Children Choices Cleanliness Communication Conflict Confusion Contentment Death Deception Desire Dignity Doubt Dying Earth Education Elders Envy Evil Exercise Experience Fame Family Fashion Fate Fear Feelings Forgiveness Friendship Funny Genius Giving Goodness Grief Growth Happiness Heart History Home Honor Hope Human Nature Humanity Hurt Ignorance Imagination Innovation Inspiration Inspirational Integrity Judging Judgment Justice Knowledge Language Learning Liberty Life Logic Loss Love Luck Lying Mankind Marriage Math Memories Money Monument Motivational Nature Opportunity Painting Passion Peace Perfection Philosophy Photography Pleasure Power Praise Progress Prosperity Reading Religion Revenge Revolution Running Science Society Solitude Son Soul Spirituality Strength Study Success Time Travel Truth Understanding Universe Victory Virtue War Water Weakness Wealth Wife Wisdom Wit Writing

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

Children, Business, Ignorance

'Essays' (1625) 'Of Boldness'.

If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.

Hills, Ifs

1625 Essays, no.12,'Of Boldness'.

I like, you may say, the glitter and colour that comes from the mouth, and I've always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.

I Like You, Sunset, Glitter

David Sylvester, Francis Bacon (1975). “Francis Bacon”, Pantheon

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

Wise, Nature, Fool

1625 Essays, no.12,'Of Boldness'.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

Time, Business, People

Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.

Art, Order, Desire

Francis Bacon (1975). “Francis Bacon, recent paintings, 1968-1974: March 20-Jun 29, 1975, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York : [catalog].”, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York

Children sweeten labours. But they make misfortune more bitter. They increase the care of life. But they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts. But memory, merit and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.

Children, Memories, Men

Francis Bacon (1826). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban and Lord High Chancellor of England: Sylva sylvarum (century IX-X) Physiological remains. Medical remains. Medical receipts. Works moral: Colours of good and evil. Essays of counsels civil and moral. Theological works”, p.258

A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.

Struggle, Illustration, Events

The bee enclosed and through the amber shown Seems buried in the juice which was his own.

Juice, Amber, Bees

Money is like muck, not good unless spread.

Money, Spread, Change Your Attitude

Francis Bacon (1842). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England”, p.568

Without friends the world is but a wilderness.

Funny Friend, World, Wilderness

The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success.

Nature, Science, Views

Francis Bacon, William Rawley (1863). “Translations of the philosophical works”, p.68

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.

Party, Men, Shapes

Francis Bacon, David Mallet (1740). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Lord High Chancellor of England ...: With Several Additional Pieces, Never Before Printed in Any Edition of His Works. To which is Prefixed, a New Life of the Author”, p.334

The Syllogism consists of propositions, propositions consist of words, words are symbols of notions. Therefore if the notions themselves (which is the root of the matter) are confused and over-hastily abstracted from the facts, there can be no firmness in the superstructure. Our only hope therefore lies in a true induction.

Confused, Lying, Roots

Francis Bacon (1858). “Works of Francis Bacon: 4”, p.49

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

Best Friend, Men, Self

Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (1859). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: With a Life of the Author by Basil Montagu”, p.35, Philadelphia : Parry & McMillan

No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years before the thing begins to sort itself out.

Time, Artist, Years

David Sylvester, Francis Bacon (1975). “Francis Bacon”, Pantheon

I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.

Passion, Artist, Feelings

Custom is the principle magistrate of man's life.

Men, Principles, Customs

For there is a great difference in delivery of the mathematics , which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy , which is the most immersed. And howsoever contention hath been moved , touching a uniformity of method in multiformity of matter, yet we see how that opinion, besides the weakness of it, hath been of ill desert towards learning, as that which taketh the way to reduce learning to certain empty and barren generalities; being but the very husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method.

Learning, Knowledge, Science

"Collected Works of Francis Bacon".

That conceit, elegantly expressed by the Emperor Charles V., in his instructions to the King, his son, "that fortune hath somewhat the nature of a woman, that if she be too much wooed she is the farther off.

Kings, Son, Too Much

Francis Bacon (2010). “Bacon's Advancement of Learning and the New Atlantis”, p.215, Lulu.com

Time is the greatest innovator.

Life, Time, Innovation

'Essays' (1625) 'Of Innovations'

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

Philosophy, Atheism, Spirituality

First therefore let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are revealed to man and may be observed with sobriety; wherein we may not seek it by the name of Learning; for all Learning is Knowledge acquired, and all Knowledge in God is original: and therefore we must look for it by another name, that of Wisdom or Sapience, as the Scriptures call it.

Knowledge, Men, Names

Francis Bacon (1765). “The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes”, p.82

You want accuracy, but not representation. If you know how to make the figuration, it doesn't work. Anything you can make, you make by accident. In painting, you have to know what you do, not how, when you do it.

Want, Painting, Accuracy

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Death, Fear, Believe

Francis Bacon (1765). “The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes”, p.636

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