Francis Bacon citations

Page 7

“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.”

“I bequeath my soul to God… My body to be buried obscurely. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age.”

“Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.”

“You shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves?”

“God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.”

“Boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences.”

“The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.”

“"You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God" This canon is the mother of all canons against heresy; the causes of error are two; the ignorance of the will of God, and the ignorance or not sufficient consideration of his power.”

“Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.”

“Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man choose them for employment; for certainly you were better take for business, a man somewhat absurd, than over-formal.”

“But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.”

“Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.”

“Come home to men's business and bosoms.”

“He that defers his charity 'till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.”

“Do not wonder, if the common people speak more truly than those of high rank; for they speak with more safety.”
Ne mireris, si vulgus verius loquatur quam honoratiores; quia etiam tutius loquitur.

“Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.”

“Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.”
Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret.

“And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.”

“Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.”

“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public.”

“For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man, and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions.”

“Virtue is like precious odors — most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.”

“This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes.”

“It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, “It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.””

“For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise.”

“Beware of sudden change, in any great point of diet, and, if necessity inforce it, fit the rest to it. For it is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things, than one.”

“It would be an 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.”

“We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to Nature the anticipation of Nature (as being rash and premature) and that which is properly deduced from things the interpretation of Nature.”

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that traveleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.”

“Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.”