Francis Bacon Quotes About Wit
-
But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men.
→ -
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.
→ -
If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs.
→ -
The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
→ -
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.
→ -
There are many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.
→ -
Men ought to find the difference between saltiness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory.
→ -
When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.
→ -
But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.
→ -
We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?
→ -
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
→ -
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
→ -
The images of mens wits and knowledge remain in books. They generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages
→
Francis Bacon
- Born: January 22, 1561
- Died: April 9, 1626
- Occupation: Former Lord Chancellor
Related Authors
-
Thomas Hobbes Philosopher -
David Hume Philosopher -
Voltaire Writer -
Immanuel Kant Philosopher -
Baruch Spinoza Philosopher -
Gottfried Leibniz Mathematician -
Nicolaus Copernicus Mathematician -
Roger Bacon Philosopher -
Rene Descartes Philosopher -
John Locke Philosopher -
George Berkeley Philosopher -
Niccolo Machiavelli Historian -
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Philosopher -
Isaac Newton Physicist -
Tommaso Campanella Philosopher -
Plato Philosopher -
Robert Boyle Philosopher -
Johannes Kepler Mathematician -
Galileo Galilei Physicist -
Aristotle Philosopher