Francis Bacon, born in 1909 in Dublin, Ireland, was a pioneering figure in 20th-century art, known for his visceral and emotionally charged paintings. Bacon’s work is characterized by its raw intensity, distorted figures, and existential themes, exploring the darker aspects of human existence.

Bacon’s paintings often depicted contorted and anguished figures, trapped in claustrophobic spaces or subjected to violent distortions. His bold use of color and brushwork added to the sense of psychological tension and unease in his work.

Throughout his career, Bacon drew inspiration from sources such as literature, philosophy, and personal experiences, creating powerful and evocative images that resonated with viewers on a visceral level.

Despite facing criticism and controversy for his provocative subject matter and unconventional approach to painting, Bacon’s influence on the art world was profound. He is celebrated for his uncompromising commitment to exploring the depths of human emotion and experience, cementing his place as one of the most important and enduring artists of the 20th century.

Francis Bacon Quotes

1. “Knowledge is power.”
— Francis Bacon

2. “A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
— Francis Bacon

3. “Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.”
— Francis Bacon

4. “Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
— Francis Bacon

5. “Money is a great servant but a bad master.”
— Francis Bacon

6. “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
— Francis Bacon

7. “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.”
— Francis Bacon

8. “I would live to study, not study to live.”
— Francis Bacon

9. “Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.”
— Francis Bacon

10. “It’s not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.”
— Francis Bacon

11. “Science is but an image of the truth.”
— Francis Bacon

12. “Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.”
— Francis Bacon

13. “Reading maketh a full man.”
— Francis Bacon

14. “By far the best proof is experience.”
— Francis Bacon

15. “We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.”
— Francis Bacon

16. “The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”
— Francis Bacon

17. “Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.”
— Francis Bacon

18. “Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
— Francis Bacon

19. “Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake…”
— Francis Bacon

20. “If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.”
— Francis Bacon

21. “Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.”
— Francis Bacon

22. “I believe in deeply ordered chaos.”
— Francis Bacon

23. “Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.”
— Francis Bacon

24. “Revenge is a kind of wild justice.”
— Francis Bacon

25. “Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.”
— Francis Bacon

26. “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
— Francis Bacon

27. “All colours will agree in the dark.”
— Francis Bacon

28. “Without friends the world is but a wilderness.”
— Francis Bacon

29. “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
— Francis Bacon

30. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
— Francis Bacon

31. “A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.”
— Francis Bacon

32. “Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”
— Francis Bacon

33. “The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.”
— Francis Bacon

34. “Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.”
— Francis Bacon

35. “Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
— Francis Bacon

36. “If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted.”
— Francis Bacon

37. “Wonder is the seed of knowledge.”
— Francis Bacon

38. “Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.”
— Francis Bacon

39. “To know truly is to know by causes.”
— Francis Bacon

40. “He that hath knowledge spareth his words.”
— Francis Bacon

41. “Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.”
— Francis Bacon

42. “Atheism leads a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue.”
— Francis Bacon

43. “Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.”
— Francis Bacon

44. “Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are are only good intellectual tools.”
— Francis Bacon

45. “Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.”
— Francis Bacon

46. “The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.”
— Francis Bacon

47. “Opportunity makes a thief.”
— Francis Bacon

48. “If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.”
— Francis Bacon

49. “Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.”
— Francis Bacon

50. “The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.”
— Francis Bacon

51. “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.”
— Francis Bacon

52. “Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.”
— Francis Bacon

53. “For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike.”
— Francis Bacon

54. “I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.”
— Francis Bacon

55. “Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.”
— Francis Bacon

56. “If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.”
— Francis Bacon

57. “Truth is a naked and open daylight.”
— Francis Bacon

58. “A bachelor’s life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.”
— Francis Bacon

59. “For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”
— Francis Bacon

60. “Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow.”
— Francis Bacon

61. “Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”
— Francis Bacon

62. “Art is man added to Nature.”
— Francis Bacon

63. “Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.”
— Francis Bacon

64. “There is superstition in avoiding superstition.”
— Francis Bacon

65. “The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel.”
— Francis Bacon

66. “It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
— Francis Bacon

67. “The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.”
— Francis Bacon

68. “Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees…”
— Francis Bacon

69. “Half of science is putting forth the right questions.”
— Francis Bacon

70. “Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.”
— Francis Bacon

71. “Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.”
— Francis Bacon

72. “The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.”
— Francis Bacon

73. “Parents who wish to train up their children in the way they should go must go in the way in which they would have their children go.”
— Francis Bacon

74. “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”
— Francis Bacon

75. “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
— Francis Bacon

76. “Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.”
— Francis Bacon

77. “To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: ‘Be angry, but sin not.’ ‘Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’”
— Francis Bacon

78. “Silence is the virtue of fools.”
— Francis Bacon

79. “The folly of one man is the fortune of another.”
— Francis Bacon

80. “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.”
— Francis Bacon

81. “They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”
— Francis Bacon

82. “In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.”
— Francis Bacon

83. “A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.”
— Francis Bacon

84. “It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.”
— Francis Bacon

85. “When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting.”
— Francis Bacon

86. “Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.”
— Francis Bacon

87. “A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.”
— Francis Bacon

88. “There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.”
— Francis Bacon

89. “Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.”
— Francis Bacon

90. “A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.”
— Francis Bacon

91. “It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.”
— Francis Bacon

92. “There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.”
— Francis Bacon

93. “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
— Francis Bacon

94. “It is impossible to love and to be wise.”
— Francis Bacon

95. “We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.”
— Francis Bacon

96. “God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”
— Francis Bacon

97. “It is natural to die as to be born.”
— Francis Bacon

98. “The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.”
— Francis Bacon

99. “Laws and Institutions Must Go Hand in Hand with the Progress of the Human Mind.”
— Francis Bacon

100. “If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.”
— Francis Bacon

101. “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”
— Francis Bacon

102. “Secrecy in suits goes a great way towards success.”
— Francis Bacon

103. “Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.”
— Francis Bacon

104. “Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.”
— Francis Bacon

105. “The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.”
— Francis Bacon

106. “A lie faces God and shrinks from man.”
— Francis Bacon

107. “Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”
— Francis Bacon

108. “It’s not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.”
— Francis Bacon

109. “The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body and reduce it to harmony.”
— Francis Bacon

110. “Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.”
— Francis Bacon

111. “As is the garden such is the gardener. A man’s nature runs either to herbs or weeds.”
— Francis Bacon

112. “In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.”
— Francis Bacon

113. “In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts.”
— Francis Bacon

114. “Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.”
— Francis Bacon

115. “The universe must not be narrowed down to the limit of our understanding, but our understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered.”
— Francis Bacon

116. “The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.”
— Francis Bacon

117. “God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.”
— Francis Bacon

118. “Great changes are easier than small ones.”
— Francis Bacon

119. “The light that a man receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comes from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.”
— Francis Bacon

120. “Friendship maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.”
— Francis Bacon

121. “The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.”
— Francis Bacon

122. “If you can talk about it, why paint it?”
— Francis Bacon

123. “Friends are thieves of time.”
— Francis Bacon

124. “Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.”
— Francis Bacon

125. “He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.”
— Francis Bacon

126. “We must see whether the same clock with weights will go faster at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; it is probable, if the pull of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine, that the earth has real attraction.”
— Francis Bacon

127. “The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.”
— Francis Bacon

128. “In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.”
— Francis Bacon

129. “There was a young man in Rome that was very like Augustus Caesar; Augustus took knowledge of it and sent for the man, and asked him “Was your mother never at Rome?” He answered “No Sir; but my father was.””
— Francis Bacon

130. “Friendship redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.”
— Francis Bacon

131. “Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.”
— Francis Bacon

132. “In charity there is no excess.”
— Francis Bacon

133. “We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.”
— Francis Bacon

134. “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.”
— Francis Bacon

135. “Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.”
— Francis Bacon

136. “Cure the disease and kill the patient.”
— Francis Bacon

137. “It’s all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary.”
— Francis Bacon

138. “There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.”
— Francis Bacon

139. “Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.”
— Francis Bacon

140. “Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of the artist’s mood. But it rarely is. Very often he may be in greatest despair and be painting his happiest paintings.”
— Francis Bacon

141. “The place of justice is a hallowed place.”
— Francis Bacon

142. “Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.”
— Francis Bacon

143. “There are many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.”
— Francis Bacon

144. “To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.”
— Francis Bacon

145. “Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.”
— Francis Bacon

146. “I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.”
— Francis Bacon

147. “The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes the wrong one.”
— Francis Bacon

148. “Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.”
— Francis Bacon

149. “A just fear of an imminent danger, though be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.”
— Francis Bacon

150. “All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.”
— Francis Bacon