Francis Bacon Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

From the Latin “ipsa scientia potestas est”; common English rendering.

Of Friendship; Bacon names emotional disclosure as one of friendship’s principal benefits.

Essays, “Of Friendship,” Project Gutenberg #56463. Bacon follows his contrast between crowds and real company by describing the absence of true friends as a deeper form of solitude.

Essays, “Of Friendship,” Project Gutenberg #56463. Bacon concludes his first “fruit” of friendship by arguing that disclosure redoubles joys and cuts griefs in halves.

Bacon, “Of Revenge”; the sentence continues by contrasting revenge with wounds that would otherwise heal.

Francis Bacon, essay IV ‘Of Revenge,’ represented by Project Gutenberg #575. The frozen catalog sentence capitalizes the extracted opening ‘In’ and ends after ‘superior’; the witness reads it inside the longer sentence beginning ‘Certainly, in taking revenge...’ and continuing ‘for it is a prince's part to pardon.’ It remains early-modern moral and legal-political essay argument rather than modern clinical anger guidance.

Francis Bacon, 'Of Studies,' essay L in the 1625 Essays; independently checked against the validated 1884 Works of Francis Bacon, Volume I scan at printed page 55 / scan leaf 183. The opening sentence names delight, ornament and ability as uses of study; it remains early-modern essay argument rather than educational-outcome research.

Of Studies; Bacon distinguishes the intellectual uses of reading, conversation, and writing within the essay’s compact account of study and judgment.

Essay “Of Studies”; Bacon distinguishes different depths and purposes of reading.

Of Studies; the sentence is shortened by omitting Bacon’s middle clause about talk and discourse.

Of Studies, in Bacon’s instructions for how different kinds of books should be read.

Francis Bacon, 'Of Truth,' essay I in the 1625 Essays; independently checked against the validated 1884 Works of Francis Bacon, Volume I scan leaf 139. The retained sentence closes Bacon's theological/philosophical truth discussion by linking charity, providence and truth; it is explicitly early-modern Christian-philosophical rhetoric, not clinical or scientific evidence.

The Advancement of Learning, First Book, Project Gutenberg #5500, transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition. Bacon contrasts impatience of doubt with mature suspension of judgment and then sets out two ways of contemplation before saying that beginning with certainties ends in doubts while beginning with doubts can end in certainties. It remains early-modern epistemological argument rather than a modern experimental rule for scientific method.