"If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs."
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Quote collection
Francis Bacon quotes (page 24 of 33)
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"The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance - if it is not irrational, you make illustration."
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"If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma."
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"I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, "Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.""
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"Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."
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"There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth."
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"In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance."
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"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men."
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"For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes."
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"Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent."
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"A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune."
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"Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother."
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"It is natural to die as to be born."
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"The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses: the one, that it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods; when that which is not fully appearing is not collected into assertion, whereby error might draw error, but reserved in doubt: the other, that the entry of doubts are as so many suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that which, if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have advised, but passed it over without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts, is made to be attended and applied."
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"Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation."
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"Vices of the time; vices of the man."
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"The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man."
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"I think I tend to destroy the better paintings, or those that have been better to a certain extent. I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities, and they lose everything. I think I would say that I destroy all the better paintings."
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"He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age."
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"The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions."
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