Top 669 Quotes & Sayings by Francis Bacon - Page 12

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.

The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.

There was never miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to confess a God.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

Men leave their riches either to their kindred or their friends, and moderate portions prosper best in both.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.

I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.