Success Quote by Francis Bacon

Strength, Bacon implies, is often less a stockpile of virtue than a posture: the ability to push back. "Opposition" isn’t just disagreement; it’s friction as a life support system. In court politics, in scholarship, in any hierarchy that rewards performance, a man can look formidable because he is resisting something - rivals, orthodoxy, a reigning favorite. Take away the contest and the strength can evaporate, because it was never simply internal muscle; it was a practiced stance calibrated to an enemy.

The sly sting lands in the second clause. "When he faileth, he grows out of use" treats the person like a tool in a drawer: functional while effective, discardable when dulled. Bacon is writing from a world where "use" is social currency and failure is not a private setback but a public demotion. His own career, threaded through patronage, charges, and spectacular collapse, gives the line its hard-earned realism. He knew the court’s brutal logic: the moment your oppositional energy stops producing results, your identity is rewritten from "formidable" to "spent."

Subtextually, Bacon is also diagnosing a personality type: the contrarian whose coherence depends on having something to fight. Opposition can generate clarity and courage, but it can also become a dependency, a way to outsource purpose to conflict. The quote works because it flatters strength while quietly warning that some of what passes for strength is just good timing in a well-lit feud.