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 BaconRead
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True beauty often includes elements that are unconventional or surprising.
Francis Bacon's quote suggests that what we perceive as beautiful is often defined by an element of uniqueness or oddity. Excellent beauty, rather than being simply pleasing or conventional, carries with it a measure of strangeness that sets it apart and makes it memorable, indicating that diversity in proportion contributes significantly to aesthetic value.
Themes
BeautyStrangenessProportionUniquenessAesthetics
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about art, one could say, 'As Francis Bacon noted, there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion, highlighting the significance of unusual techniques in modern art.'
More from Francis Bacon
All quotes →Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Francis BaconRead
Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
Francis BaconRead
Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils
Francis BaconRead
Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
Francis BaconRead
Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
Francis BaconRead
Similar quotes
When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Our notion of an optimist is a man who knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can't be worse than the last one.
Franklin P. AdamsRead
The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory.
Giacomo CasanovaRead
While everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates.... For I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.
Mahatma GandhiRead
The ideal of the supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of reason which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient necessary cause.
Immanuel KantRead
Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy.
Sherman AlexieRead