213 quotes
Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
Essays (1625)
Things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm.
Essays (1625)
But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.
For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.
Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
To seek to extinguish Anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics.
The Essays of Francis Bacon/LVII Of Anger (1597)
Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection.
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
Words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.
Novum Organum (1620)
Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up.
Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.
Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597)
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Essays : Of Revenge (1625)
The pomp of death alarms us more than death itself.
Truth therefore and utility are here the very same thing.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.
The learning that now is hath the curse of barrenness, and is courtesan-like, for pleasure and not for fruit.
It has been well said that "the arch-flatterer with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a man's self."
Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses.
Of Marriage and Single Life. Essays (1613)