On Repentance

 

 Repentance so altereth and changeth a man through the mercy of God,

be he never so defiled, that it maketh him pure and clear.

 

-- John Whitgift (1530?-1604), Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University from 1567, tutor of Francis Bacon in the 1570s, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1583, and persecutor of the Puritans 

Donald Trump is the decay of a whole age teeming with zeroes

 

 He that plots to be the only figure among cyphers, is the decay of a whole age. 

 

-- Francis Bacon 

People are credulous

 

 Wise judges have prescribed, that men may not rashly believe the confessions of witches, nor the evidence against them. For the witches themselves are imaginative; and people are credulous, and ready to impute accidents to witchcraft.

-- Francis Bacon

The belief of fools and wise men

 Superstitious prophecies are not only the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men.

-- Francis Bacon

Tut-tut, my pain spells rain

 

 

 

 

 

Aches, and hurts, and cords, do engrieve either towards rain, or towards frost.

-- Francis Bacon

An Aristotelian critique of solitude

 Whosoever is delighted with solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.

-- Francis Bacon

The superstition of bells and smells

 The causes of superstition are pleasing and sensual rites, excess of outward and pharisaical holiness, over-great reverence of traditions which cannot but load the church.

-- Francis Bacon

Don't overlook the crannies

The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects thro' small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

-- Francis Bacon

Poor shrunken things, full of melancholy

If there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy.

-- Francis Bacon

The mediocre men

 

Men of age object too much, adventure too little,

and seldom drive business home to the full period;

but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

-- Francis Bacon

War is coming

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nir-arieli_n_3767849

 

When a warlike state grows soft and effeminate, they may be sure of a war.

-- Francis Bacon

Like orthodoxy, heresy delivers little in the way of observable improved condition

 

 

As for speculative heresies, they work mightily upon men's wits; yet do not produce great alterations in states.

-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)