"In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts."
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Quote collection
Francis Bacon quotes (page 4 of 33)
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"God's first creature, which was light."
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"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."
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"I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do."
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"There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan."
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"The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship."
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"Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?"
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"Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual."
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"The true bounds and limitations, whereby human knowledge is confined and circumscribed,... are three: the first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality: the second, that we make application of our knowledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distates or repining: the third, that we do not presume by the contemplation of Nature to attain to the mysteries of God."
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"I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime."
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"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 says it as if another had said it to him."
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"Atheism leads a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue."
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"People prefer to believe what they want to be true."
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"We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps."
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"Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses."
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"Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."
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"The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors."
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"If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us."
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"The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied."
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"[Science is] the labor and handicraft of the mind."
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