Sir Francis Bacon Quotes

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes;, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

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.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

For knowledge itself is power.

They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.

The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools, and arguments are fitted to practice in a reversed order.

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 over the other.

Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for, as it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it the more deformed; and as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances.

In superstition wise men follow fools.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding, and that which is lost by not trying.

Nero was wont to say of his master, Seneca, that his style was like mortar without lime.