Francis Bacon: Trending quotes

“Men in great place are thrice servants,—servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.”

Book II, xxxi
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

Of Great Place
Essays (1625)

“To God, truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion has been exhausted.”

Of Truth
Essays (1625)

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism XV
Novum Organum (1620), Book II

“Be true to thyself, as thou be not false to others.”

“Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.”

Of Wisdom for a Man's Self
Essays (1625)

“It is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, which the Apostle immediately addeth to the former clause; for so he saith, “Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up.””

De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, Antitheta (1623)

“Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”

Book I
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.”

Of Adversity
Essays (1625)

“Certainly fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swoln, and drowns things weighty and solid.”

Of Friendship
Essays (1625)

“The obliteration of the evil hath been practised by two means, some kind of redemption or expiation of that which is past, and an inception or account de novo for the time to come. But this part seemeth sacred and religious, and justly; for all good moral philosophy (as was said) is but a handmaid to religion.”

Of Praise
Essays (1625)

“The winning of honor, is but the revealing of a man's virtue and worth, without disadvantage.”

Book II, xxii, 14
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.”

Of Honor and Reputation
Essays (1625)

“The natural philosophy of Democritus and some others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or proofs of nature, which they term fortune, seemeth to me… in particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; whereof both intermingled final causes, the one as a part of theology, and the other as a part of logic, which were the favourite studies respectively of both those persons. Not because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province; but because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that tract.”

Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.”

Book VII, 7
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 111
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

“Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.”

“So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.”

Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597), XXIX: "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates."

“Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.”

Of Ambition
Essays (1625)

“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.”

Historia Vitæ et Mortis; Sylva Sylvarum, Cent. i. Exper. 100, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“It hath been an opinion that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and man.”

Of Cunning
Essays (1625)