Quotes by Benjamin Franklin

“At twenty years of age the will reigns at thirty, the wit and at forty, the judgment.”

“To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.”

“Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.”

“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”

“Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.”

“The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.”

“Beauty and folly are old companions.”

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

“Honesty is the best policy.”

“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.”

“Hunger is the best pickle.”

“Fatigue is the best pillow.”

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

“The first mistake in public business is the going into it.”

“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.”

“How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.”

“I saw few die of hunger of eating, a hundred thousand.”

“I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.”

“Genius without education is like silver in the mine.”

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

“Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.”

“In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.”

“The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.”

“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.”

“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.”

“Beware the hobby that eats.”

“A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.”

“Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.”

“Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.”

“Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.”

“God helps those who help themselves.”

“God works wonders now and then Behold a lawyer, an honest man.”

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

“A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”

“Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.”

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”

“Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.”

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

“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.”

“There was never a good war, or a bad peace.”

“There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.”

“Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.”

“Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.”

“Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.”

“Necessity never made a good bargain.”

“Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed too severe, seldom executed.”

“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

“Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.”

“Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.”

“I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.”

“A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.”

“There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”

“It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”

“The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.”

“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.”

“He that lives upon hope will die fasting.”

“A place for everything, everything in its place.”

“The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.”

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

“Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.”

“A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.”

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

“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.”

“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.”

“If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.”

“Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.”

“He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.”

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”

“Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.”

“Content makes poor men rich discontent makes rich men poor.”

“When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.”

“Observe all men, thyself most.”

“Nine men in ten are would be suicides.”

“He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”

“There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.”

“Time is money.”

“If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.”

“Remember that credit is money.”

“The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.”

“I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.”

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

“Well done is better than well said.”

“In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.”

“He that can have patience can have what he will.”

“He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.”

“Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.”

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”

“All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.”

“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.”

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”

“Applause waits on success.”

“Lost time is never found again.”

“You may delay, but time will not.”

“Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.”

“If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.”

“Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.”

“The doors of wisdom are never shut.”

“It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.”

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”

“Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.”

“The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.”

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