Francis Bacon citations

Page 4

“Un homme sage.”

“Se venger, c'est se mettre au niveau de l'ennemi; pardonner, c'est le dépasser.”

“Milord, il était dans ma destinée de finir comme Pline l'Ancien, qui mourut pour s’être trop approché du”

“[…]Le savoir dérivé d’Aristote, s'il est soustrait au libre examen, ne montera pas plus haut que le savoir qu' Aristote avait.”

“La science de l'homme est la mesure de sa puissance, parce qu'ignorer la cause, c'est ne pouvoir produire l'effet. On ne triomphe de la nature qu’en lui obéissant; et ce qui, dans la spéculation, porte le nom de cause, devient une règle dans la pratique.”

“On ne demande point au”

“Le médecin (…), pour guérir la maladie, tue le malade.”

“Les empiriques, semblables aux”

“Les empiriques, semblables aux fourmis, ne savent qu’amasser et user; les rationalistes, semblables aux araignées, font des toiles qu’ils tirent d’eux même; le procédé de l’abeille tient le milieu entre ces deux : elle recueille ses matériaux sur les fleurs des jardins et des champs; mais elle les transforme et les distille par une vertu qui lui est propre : c’est l’image du véritable travail de la philosophie, qui ne se fie pas aux seules forces de l’esprit humain et n’y prend même pas son principal appui. (…) C’est pourquoi il y a tout à espérer d’une alliance intime et sacrée de ces deux facultés expérimentale et rationnelle; alliance qui ne s’est pas encore rencontrée.”

“On ne demande point au syllogisme les principes de la science; on lui demande vainement les lois intermédiaires, parce qu’ils est incapable de saisir la nature dans sa subtilité; il lie l’esprit, mais non les choses.”

“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”

“Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.”

“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”

“Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.”

“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.”

“By far the best proof is experience.”

“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”

“The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”

“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!”

“It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.”

“We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.”

“Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he make his wings shorter.”

“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."”

“It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech … that are the true ends of knowledge … but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them.”

“In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works we may very properly apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works; accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention.”

“Men's thoughts, are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches, according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds, are after as they have been accustomed.”

“Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.”

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

“Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.”

“It is a strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty.”

“Who then to frail mortality shall trust
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.”

“The greatness of an estate, in bulk and territory, doth fall under measure; and the greatness of finances and revenue, doth fall under computation. The population may appear by musters; and the number and greatness of cities and towns by cards and maps. But yet there is not any thing amongst civil affairs more subject to error, than the right valuation and true judgment concerning the power and forces of an estate.”

“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.”

“Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.”

“If thou shalt aspire after the glorious acts of men, thy working shall be accompanied with compunction and strife, and thy remembrance followed with distaste and upbraidings; and justly doth it come to pass towards thee, O man, that since thou, which art God's work, doest him no reason in yielding him well-pleasing service, even thine own works also should reward thee with the like fruit of bitterness.”

“In charity there is no excess.”

“As we divided natural philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes, and productions of effects: so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes.”

“No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.”

“Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.”