Sir Francis Bacon
23 quotes
Biography
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of natural philosophy, guided by the scientific method, and his works remained influential throughout the Scientific Revolution.
"Wives are young men's mistresses companions for middle age and old men's nurses."
"Houses are built to live in and not to look on."
"Discretion in speech is more than eloquence."
"Histories make men wise poets witty the mathematics subtile natural philosophy deep morals grave logic and rhetoric able to contend."
"A healthy body is a guest-chamber for the soul a sick body is a prison."
"Old wood best to burn old wine to drink old friends to trust and old authors to read."
"The best work and of greatest merit for the public has proceeded from the unmarried or childless men."
"Some books are to be tasted others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested."
"Reading makes a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man."
"Fortune makes him fool whom she makes her darling."
"Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us."
"All the crimes on earth do not destroy so many of the human race nor alienate so much property as drunkenness."
"I take all knowledge to be my province."
"For knowledge too is itself a power."
"Reading maketh a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man."
"He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune for they are impediments to great enterprises either of virtue or mischief."
"A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage."
"I hold every man a debtor to his profession from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto."
"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
"There was never law or sect or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth."
"In taking revenge a man is but equal to his enemy but in passing it over he is his superior."
"The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit and not when they miss and commit to memory the one and forget and pass over the other."
"Virtue is like a rich stone best plain set."