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Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature, as the common saying is; but unskillfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.

Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature, as the common saying is; but unskillfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.

Approximate author period: c. 1593 AD · renaissance

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Francis Bacon
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1593 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1561–1626)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Pearls of Thought (1881) (1881 AD)

Page 111 · printed citation: Bacon · subject: Habits

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Francis Bacon: Painted portrait

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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