Franklin, Benjamin
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Franklin, Benjamin
Let the child s first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.
Franklin, Benjamin
Children
I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.
Franklin, Benjamin
Death and Dying
If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Franklin, Benjamin
Education
It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.
Franklin, Benjamin
Desire
A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
Franklin, Benjamin
Ignorance
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Franklin, Benjamin
Certainty
Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.
Franklin, Benjamin
Expenditure
Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Franklin, Benjamin
Constitutions
If you desire many things, many things will seem few.
Franklin, Benjamin
Desire
Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Franklin, Benjamin
Certainty
I have met the enemy, and it is the eyes of other people.
Franklin, Benjamin
Enemies
Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults.
Franklin, Benjamin
Enemies
Constant complaint is the poorest sort of pay for all the comforts we enjoy.
Franklin, Benjamin
Complaints and Complaining
Beware the hobby that eats.
Franklin, Benjamin
Caution
We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
Franklin, Benjamin
Cooperation
If we do not hang together, we will all hang separately.
Franklin, Benjamin
Cooperation
He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.
Franklin, Benjamin
Ignorance
Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.
Franklin, Benjamin
Ignorance
Promises may fit the friends, but non-performance will turn them into enemies.
Franklin, Benjamin
Enemies
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
Franklin, Benjamin
Books - Reading
Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.
Franklin, Benjamin
Debt
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Franklin, Benjamin
Critics and Criticism
Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.
Franklin, Benjamin
Idleness
A cheerful face is nearly as good for an invalid as healthy weather.
Franklin, Benjamin
Cheerfulness
When you re finished changing, you re finished.
Franklin, Benjamin
Change
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don t have brains enough to be honest.
Franklin, Benjamin
Deception
Many people die at twenty five and aren t buried until they are seventy five.
Franklin, Benjamin
Death and Dying
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Franklin, Benjamin
Diligence
Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?
Franklin, Benjamin
Deception
Singularity in the right hath ruined many; happy those who are convinced of the general opinion.
Franklin, Benjamin
Conformity
Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.
Franklin, Benjamin
Idleness
Read much, but not many books.
Franklin, Benjamin
Books - Reading
Drive thy business or it will drive thee.
Franklin, Benjamin
Control
So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one s own business; but to these we must add frugality if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a grout at last.
Franklin, Benjamin
Business
If you can t pay for a thing, don t buy it. If you can t get paid for it, don t sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don t wait for time.
Franklin, Benjamin
Business
God heals and the doctor takes the fee.
Franklin, Benjamin
Doctors
While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.
Franklin, Benjamin
Control
Drive your business, let not you re business drive you.
Franklin, Benjamin
Business
Remember that credit is money.
Franklin, Benjamin
Credit
If you would know the value of money try to borrow some.
Franklin, Benjamin
Borrowing
When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Gratitude
The things which hurt, instruct.
Franklin, Benjamin
Learning
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Franklin, Benjamin
Excuses
There are no gains without pains.
Franklin, Benjamin
Pain
The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.
Franklin, Benjamin
Eyes
To be thrown upon one s own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.
Franklin, Benjamin
Freedom
It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.
Franklin, Benjamin
Eyes
One should eat to live, not live to eat.
Franklin, Benjamin
Food and Eating
When I reflect, as I frequently do, upon the felicity I have enjoyed, I sometimes say to myself, that were the offer made me, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask, should be the privilege of an author, to correct in a second edition, certain errors of the first.
Franklin, Benjamin
Mistakes
Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones -- with ingratitude.
Franklin, Benjamin
Gratitude
Experience keeps a school, yet fools will learn in no other.
Franklin, Benjamin
Experience
Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.
Franklin, Benjamin
Fashion
There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means -- either may do -- the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.
Franklin, Benjamin
Happiness
The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.
Franklin, Benjamin
Heart
Most fools think they are only ignorant.
Franklin, Benjamin
Fools and Foolishness
Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.
Franklin, Benjamin
Happiness
Creditors have better memories than debtors.
Franklin, Benjamin
Memory
A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.
Franklin, Benjamin
Faults
He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
Franklin, Benjamin
Family
Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
Franklin, Benjamin
Guests
Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.
Franklin, Benjamin
Government
Honesty is the best policy.
Franklin, Benjamin
Honesty
In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Faith
The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.
Franklin, Benjamin
Faith
There are three faithful friends, an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
Franklin, Benjamin
Friends and Friendship
Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Health
Energy and persistence alter all things.
Franklin, Benjamin
Energy
The world is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet everyone has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the affairs of his neighbor.
Franklin, Benjamin
Fools and Foolishness
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
Franklin, Benjamin
Genius
Nothing preaches better than the act.
Franklin, Benjamin
Example
He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.
Franklin, Benjamin
Fortune
In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.
Franklin, Benjamin
Glutton
Take time for all things; great haste makes great waste.
Franklin, Benjamin
Hatred
Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.
Franklin, Benjamin
Habit
There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.
Franklin, Benjamin
Farming and Farmers
There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
Franklin, Benjamin
Greatness
It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.
Franklin, Benjamin
Habit
Spinoza Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
Franklin, Benjamin
Fools and Foolishness
Friends and neighbors, the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing abatement.
Franklin, Benjamin
Friends and Friendship
Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
Franklin, Benjamin
Habit
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What s a sundial in the shade.
Franklin, Benjamin
Genius
He that won t be counseled can t be helped.
Franklin, Benjamin
Learning
He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
Franklin, Benjamin
Love
Learn of the skillful; he that teaches himself, has a fool for his master.
Franklin, Benjamin
Learning
Well done, is better than well said.
Franklin, Benjamin
Example
To lengthen thy Life, lessen thy meals.
Franklin, Benjamin
Health
The sleeping fox catches no poultry.
Franklin, Benjamin
Inaction
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.
Franklin, Benjamin
Marriage
A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
Franklin, Benjamin
Laziness
He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
Franklin, Benjamin
Hope
Lying rides upon debt s back.
Franklin, Benjamin
Lies and Lying
One good husband is worth two good wives, for the scarcer things are, the more they are valued.
Franklin, Benjamin
Marriage
Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.
Franklin, Benjamin
Laziness
God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.
Franklin, Benjamin
Law and Lawyers
She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.
Franklin, Benjamin
Laughter
Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
Franklin, Benjamin
Marriage
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Franklin, Benjamin
Liberty
They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Franklin, Benjamin
Liberty
Laws too gentle, are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
Franklin, Benjamin
Law and Lawyers
You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.
Franklin, Benjamin
Procrastination
He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
Franklin, Benjamin
Kindness
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.
Franklin, Benjamin
Idleness
Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.
Franklin, Benjamin
Procrastination
I am lord of myself, accountable to none.
Franklin, Benjamin
Independence
He who waits upon fortune is never sure of dinner.
Franklin, Benjamin
Procrastination
An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife.
Franklin, Benjamin
Marriage
He s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines.
Franklin, Benjamin
Physicians
Clean your finger before you point at my spots.
Franklin, Benjamin
Hypocrisy
When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.
Franklin, Benjamin
Men and Women
I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.
Franklin, Benjamin
Life and Living
Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.
Franklin, Benjamin
Manners
Teach your child to hold his tongue; he ll learn fast enough to speak.
Franklin, Benjamin
Manners
Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.
Franklin, Benjamin
Leisure
He that hath a trade hath an estate; he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor.
Franklin, Benjamin
Labor
Life s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late
Franklin, Benjamin
Life and Living
Where liberty is, there is my country.
Franklin, Benjamin
Liberty
Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.
Franklin, Benjamin
Insults
Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.
Franklin, Benjamin
Leisure
God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country!
Franklin, Benjamin
Knowledge
Don t judge men s wealth or godliness by their Sunday appearance.
Franklin, Benjamin
Judgment and Judges
Proclaim not all thou knowest, all thou knowest, all thou hast, nor all thou cans t.
Franklin, Benjamin
Knowledge
Observe all men, thyself most.
Franklin, Benjamin
Self-observation
To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.
Franklin, Benjamin
Modesty
The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.
Franklin, Benjamin
Language
Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.
Franklin, Benjamin
Life and Living
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
Franklin, Benjamin
Peace
I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, make the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.
Franklin, Benjamin
Planning
Don t throw stones at your neighbors , if your own windows are glass.
Franklin, Benjamin
Neighbors
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Pleasure
He that s secure is not safe.
Franklin, Benjamin
Safety
There is much difference between imitating a man and counterfeiting him.
Franklin, Benjamin
Plagiarism
If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
Franklin, Benjamin
Persuasion
Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.
Franklin, Benjamin
Preachers and Preaching
Love thy neighbor -- but don t pull down your hedge.
Franklin, Benjamin
Neighbors
The first mistake in public business is going into it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Politicians and Politics
He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.
Franklin, Benjamin
Peace
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Franklin, Benjamin
Planning
Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.
Franklin, Benjamin
Pride
Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and governments.
Franklin, Benjamin
Pride
If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher s stone.
Franklin, Benjamin
Money
He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
Franklin, Benjamin
Money
Necessity never made a good bargain.
Franklin, Benjamin
Necessity
Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.
Franklin, Benjamin
Necessity
Plough deep while sluggards sleep.
Franklin, Benjamin
Opportunity
Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.
Franklin, Benjamin
Persuasion
He that can have patience can have what he will.
Franklin, Benjamin
Patience
Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
Franklin, Benjamin
Prayer
One today is worth two tomorrows.
Franklin, Benjamin
Present
Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.
Franklin, Benjamin
Poverty and The Poor
Tomorrow every fault is to be amended; but tomorrow never comes.
Franklin, Benjamin
Tomorrow
Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.
Franklin, Benjamin
Money
Applause waits on success.
Franklin, Benjamin
Popularity
For the want of a nail, the shoe was lose; for the want of a shoe the horse was lose; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.
Franklin, Benjamin
Preparation
Love well, whip well.
Franklin, Benjamin
Parents and Parenting
A little neglect may breed great mischief.
Franklin, Benjamin
Neglect
The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.
Franklin, Benjamin
Money
Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.
Franklin, Benjamin
Time and Time Management
Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
Franklin, Benjamin
Service
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Franklin, Benjamin
Resolution
If your riches are yours, why don t you take them with to the other world?
Franklin, Benjamin
Riches
A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.
Franklin, Benjamin
Tact and Tactfulness
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one s self.
Franklin, Benjamin
Self-knowledge
If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.
Franklin, Benjamin
Time and Time Management
He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
Franklin, Benjamin
Self-love
We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride and four times as much by our foolishness.
Franklin, Benjamin
Taxes and Taxation
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Franklin, Benjamin
Taxes and Taxation
Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.
Franklin, Benjamin
Science and Scientists
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.
Franklin, Benjamin
Want
You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.
Franklin, Benjamin
Success
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Franklin, Benjamin
Sleep
He who multiplies riches, multiplies cares.
Franklin, Benjamin
Riches
He s a fool that makes his doctor his heir.
Franklin, Benjamin
Stupidity
Half wits talk much, but say little.
Franklin, Benjamin
Speakers and Speaking
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
Franklin, Benjamin
Stupidity
He that speaks much, is much mistaken.
Franklin, Benjamin
Speakers and Speaking
He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.
Franklin, Benjamin
Rest
I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with. How shall I come to a knowledge of her faults, and whether she has the virtues I imagine she has? Answer. Commend her among her female acquaintances.
Franklin, Benjamin
Slander
Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never mended well.
Franklin, Benjamin
Reputation
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
Franklin, Benjamin
Time and Time Management
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Franklin, Benjamin
Unity
Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.
Franklin, Benjamin
Time and Time Management
Some punishment seems preparing for a people who are ungratefully abusing the best constitution and the best King any nation was ever blessed with, intent on nothing but luxury, licentiousness, power, places, pensions, and plunder; while the ministry, divided in their counsels, with little regard for each other, worried by perpetual oppositions, in continual apprehension of changes, intent on securing popularity in case they should lose favor, have for some years past had little time or inclination to attend to our small affairs, whose remoteness makes them appear even smaller.
Franklin, Benjamin
Riots
Would you live with ease, do what you should, and not what you please. Success has ruined many a man.
Franklin, Benjamin
Success
Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.
Franklin, Benjamin
Riches
The best is the cheapest.
Franklin, Benjamin
Quality
Three can keep a secret if two are dead.
Franklin, Benjamin
Secrets
If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.
Franklin, Benjamin
Service
He that rises late must trot all day.
Franklin, Benjamin
Time and Time Management
Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.
Franklin, Benjamin
Relationships
Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences.
Franklin, Benjamin
Rules
It is foolish to lay out money for the purchase of repentance.
Franklin, Benjamin
Repentance
A small leak can sink a great ship
Franklin, Benjamin
Things and Little Things
Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.
Franklin, Benjamin
Things and Little Things
Our necessities never equal our wants.
Franklin, Benjamin
Want
Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.
Franklin, Benjamin
Age and Aging
At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
Franklin, Benjamin
Age and Aging
There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.
Franklin, Benjamin
Fame
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
Franklin, Benjamin
Fame
If you wouldn t live long, live well; for folly and wickedness shorten life.
Franklin, Benjamin
Age and Aging
Clearly spoken, Mr. Fogg; you explain English by Greek.
Franklin, Benjamin
Ambiguity
The discontented man finds no easy chair.
Franklin, Benjamin
Discontent
A single man has not nearly the value he would have in a state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors.
Franklin, Benjamin
Bachelor
Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.
Franklin, Benjamin
Admiration
An old young man, will be a young old man.
Franklin, Benjamin
Age and Aging
Let thy discontents be thy secrets.
Franklin, Benjamin
Discontent
Those that won t be counseled can t be helped.
Franklin, Benjamin
Counsel
Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He who is content. Who is that? Nobody.
Franklin, Benjamin
Contentment
Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.
Franklin, Benjamin
Contentment
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
Franklin, Benjamin
Discontent
Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.
Franklin, Benjamin
Argument
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
Franklin, Benjamin
Conflict
The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken to what is said and to answer to the purpose.
Franklin, Benjamin
Conversation
To bear other people s afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.
Franklin, Benjamin
Affliction
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
Franklin, Benjamin
Economy and Economics
Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.
Franklin, Benjamin
Anger
Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.
Franklin, Benjamin
Ambition
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Franklin, Benjamin
Anxiety
Wise men don t need advice. Fools won t take it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Advice
They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.
Franklin, Benjamin
Advice
The proof of gold is fire...
Franklin, Benjamin
Adversity
He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.
Franklin, Benjamin
Argument
That which resembles most living one s life over again, seems to be to recall all the circumstances of it; and, to render this remembrance more durable, to record them in writing.
Franklin, Benjamin
Autobiography
I think that a young state, like a young virgin, should modestly stay at home, and wait the application of suitors for an alliance with her; and not run about offering her amity to all the world; and hazarding their refusal. Our virgin is a jolly one; and tho at present not very rich, will in time be a great fortune, and where she has a favorable predisposition, it seems to me well worth cultivating.
Franklin, Benjamin
Alliances
Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.
Franklin, Benjamin
Age and Aging
If you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors.
Franklin, Benjamin
Beards
What has become clear to you since we last met?
Franklin, Benjamin
Discovery
Words may show a man s wit but actions his meaning.
Franklin, Benjamin
Action
The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.
Franklin, Benjamin
Absence
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
Franklin, Benjamin
Expectation
We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.
Franklin, Benjamin
America
They that are on their guard and appear ready to receive their adversaries, are in much less danger of being attacked than the supine, secure and negligent.
Franklin, Benjamin
Vigilance
It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
Franklin, Benjamin
Work
Industry, perseverance, and frugality make fortune yield.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wealth
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Franklin, Benjamin
Writers and Writing
Waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality, nothing will do, and with them everything.
Franklin, Benjamin
Waste
If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wish and Wishing
Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wives
Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wisdom
The doors of wisdom are never shut.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wisdom
God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.
Franklin, Benjamin
Virtue
Vice knows that she is ugly, so she puts on her mask.
Franklin, Benjamin
Vice
What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.
Franklin, Benjamin
War
Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter, wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action: and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.
Franklin, Benjamin
Vanity
Industry need not wish.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wish and Wishing
He does not posses wealth that allows it to possess him.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wealth
The way to wealth depends on just two words, industry and frugality.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wealth
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Wealth