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Benjamin Franklin quotes (170) It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. Benjamin Franklin Category: Substance Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion. Benjamin Franklin Category: Rich He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed. Benjamin Franklin Category: Borrow Are you angry that others disappoint you? Remember you cannot depend on yourself. Benjamin Franklin Category: Self Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day. Benjamin Franklin Category: Happiness There are more old drunkards than old doctors. Benjamin Franklin Category: Alcohol The solution of problems is one of the lowest forms of mathematical research ... yet its educational value cannot be overestimated. It is the ladder by which the mind ascends into higher fields of original research and investigation. Many dormant minds have been aroused into activity through the mastery of a single problem. Benjamin Franklin Finkel Category: Unsorted Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools that have not wits enough to be honest. Benjamin Franklin Category: Honest Clearly spoken Mr. Fogg; you explain English by Greek. Benjamin Franklin Category: Ambiguity If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody there would be very little printed. Benjamin Franklin Category: Newspaper Let the childs first lesson be obedience and the second will be what thou wilt. Benjamin Franklin Category: Children Tis against some mens principle to pay interest and seems against others interest to pay the principle. Benjamin Franklin Category: Debt He that riseth late must trot all day and shall scarce overtake his business at night. Benjamin Franklin Category: Morning No gains without pains. Benjamin Franklin Category: Gains He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities. Benjamin Franklin Category: Rest Ill customs and bad advice are seldom forgotten. Benjamin Franklin Category: Advice A cheerful face is nearly as good for an invalid as healthy weather. Benjamin Franklin Category: Cheerful Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. Benjamin Franklin Category: Lazy He does not possess wealth that allows it to possess him. Benjamin Franklin Category: Wealth Waste neither time nor money but make the best use of both. Benjamin Franklin Category: Waste Search others for virtues thyself for thy vices. Benjamin Franklin Category: Virtue Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. Benjamin Franklin Category: Civil He thats secure is not safe. Benjamin Franklin Category: Safety An old young man will be a young old man. Benjamin Franklin Category: Theory Many have quarreled about religion that never practice it. Benjamin Franklin Category: Religion Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience. Benjamin Franklin Category: Genius A place for everything everything in its place. Benjamin Franklin Category: Order Would you live with ease Do what you ought and not what you please. Benjamin Franklin Category: Please Industry perseverance and frugality make fortune yield. Benjamin Franklin Category: Frugal The proud hate pride in others. Benjamin Franklin Category: Unsorted The morning hour has gold in its mouth. Benjamin Franklin Category: Gold To find out a girls faults praise her to her girlfriends. Benjamin Franklin Category: Woe Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin Category: Certainty A little house well filled A little field well tilled And a little wife well willed Are great riches. Benjamin Franklin Category: House If you would not be forgotten As soon as you are dead and rotten Either write things worthy reading Or do things worth the writing. Benjamin Franklin Category: False A false friend and a shadow stay around only while the sun shines. Benjamin Franklin Category: Friendship Where there is marriage without love there will be love without marriage. Benjamin Franklin Category: Love Little strokes Fell great oaks. Benjamin Franklin Category: Gravity A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar. Benjamin Franklin Category: More If you want to keep a secret from an enemy tell it not to a friend. Benjamin Franklin Category: Endure The absent are never without fault nor the present without excuses. Benjamin Franklin Category: Absent Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. Benjamin Franklin Category: Resolution When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and canceling them out one against the other I take the course indicated by what remains. Benjamin Franklin Category: Argument Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure when he is really selling himself to it. Benjamin Franklin Category: Pleasure Industry pays debts despair increases them. Benjamin Franklin Category: Industry After crosses and losses men grow humbler and wiser. Benjamin Franklin Category: Trouble 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. Benjamin Franklin Category: Earth The heart of a fool is in his mouth but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart. Benjamin Franklin Category: Heart There are three faithful friends an old wife an old dog and ready money. Benjamin Franklin Category: Dog Employ thy time well if thou meanest to gain leisure. Benjamin Franklin Category: Leisure 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. Benjamin Franklin Category: Life Never confuse motion with action. Benjamin Franklin Category: Action He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees. Benjamin Franklin Category: Judge Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. Written when he was 16. Benjamin Franklin Category: Freedom A good conscience is a continued Christmas. Benjamin Franklin Category: Christmas Beauty and folly are old companions. Benjamin Franklin Category: Beauty He that can have patience can have what he will. Benjamin Franklin Category: Worse Hear reason or she'll make you feel her. Benjamin Franklin Category: Reason Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it. Benjamin Franklin Category: Fool Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. Benjamin Franklin Category: Anticipation Three removes are as bad as a fire. Benjamin Franklin Category: Fire Sometime we may learn more from a mans errors than from his virtues. Benjamin Franklin Category: Error Don't think to hunt two hares with one dog. Benjamin Franklin Category: Loyalty He that hath a trade hath an estate; he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor. Benjamin Franklin Category: Labor Content makes poor men rich; Discontent makes rich men poor. Benjamin Franklin Category: Potential He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged. Benjamin Franklin Category: Kindness The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money. Benjamin Franklin Category: Money He that waits upon Fortune is never sure of a Dinner. Benjamin Franklin Category: Fortune Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe seldom executed. Benjamin Franklin Category: Law The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands. Benjamin Franklin Category: Eyes Pride that dines on vanity sups on contempt. Benjamin Franklin Category: Contempt Despair ruins some presumption many. Benjamin Franklin Category: Despair Admiration is the daughter of ignorance. Benjamin Franklin Category: Administration A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats. Benjamin Franklin Category: Lawyers 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. Benjamin Franklin Category: If Any fool can criticize condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin Category: Condemn A man may if he knows not how to save as he gets keep his nose to the grindstone. Benjamin Franklin Category: Save It is better to be thought a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt. Benjamin Franklin Category: Stupidity God helps those who help themselves. Benjamin Franklin Category: God Man is a tool-making animal. Benjamin Franklin Category: Tools If you know how to spend less than you get you have the philosophers stone. Benjamin Franklin Category: Thrift At the working mans house hunger looks in but dares not enter. Benjamin Franklin Category: Work At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty the wit; and at forty the judgment. Benjamin Franklin Category: Youth The first mistake in public business is the going into it. Benjamin Franklin Category: Business One today is worth two tomorrows. Benjamin Franklin Category: Time Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame. Benjamin Franklin Category: Anger Clean your finger before you point at my spots. Benjamin Franklin Category: Hypocrisy Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste. Benjamin Franklin Category: Haste I shall never ask never refuse nor ever resign an office. Benjamin Franklin Category: Public You can not pluck roses without fear of thorns Nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns. Benjamin Franklin Category: Wife Trouble springs from idleness. Benjamin Franklin Category: Proverb Experience keeps a dear school but fools will learn in no other. Benjamin Franklin Category: Experience Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Benjamin Franklin Category: Man The best of all medicines are rest and fasting. Benjamin Franklin Category: Medicine Each year one vicious habit rooted out in time ought to make the worst man good. Benjamin Franklin Category: Habit The cat in gloves catches no mice. Benjamin Franklin Category: Cat To lengthen thy life lessen thy meals. Benjamin Franklin Category: Diet All would live long but none would be old. Benjamin Franklin Category: Age In general mankind since the improvement of cookery eats twice as much as nature requires. Benjamin Franklin Category: Gluttony To bear other peoples afflictions everyone has courage and enough to spare. Benjamin Franklin Category: Courage Fish and visitors smell in three days. Benjamin Franklin Category: Fish Half a truth is often a great lie. Benjamin Franklin Category: Lever Our necessities never equal our wants. Benjamin Franklin Category: Want All mankind is divided into three classes: those who are immovable those who are movable; and those who move. Benjamin Franklin Category: Change If passion drives you let reason hold the reins. Benjamin Franklin Category: Passion Constant complaint is the poorest sort of pay for all the comforts we enjoy. Benjamin Franklin Category: Complacency Pride breakfasted with Plenty dined with Poverty supped with Infamy. Benjamin Franklin Category: Breakfast The discontented man finds no easy chair. Benjamin Franklin Category: Discontent There are no gains without pains. Benjamin Franklin Category: Dream They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. This sentence was much used in the Revolutionary period. It occurs even so early as November 1755 in an answer by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to the Governor and forms the motto of Franklins Historical Review 1759 appearing also in the body of the work. Frothingham: Rise of the Republic of the United States p. 413. Benjamin Franklin Category: Deserve Kill no more pigeons than you can eat. Benjamin Franklin Category: Kill After three days men grow weary of a wench a guest and weather rainy. Benjamin Franklin Category: Guest God heals and the doctor takes the fee. Benjamin Franklin Category: Doctor The most trifling actions that affect a mans credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning or at nine at night heard by a creditor makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at the billiard-table or hears your voice at a tavern when you should be at work he sends for his money the next day. Benjamin Franklin Category: Credit Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors. Benjamin Franklin Category: Author The best is the cheapest. Benjamin Franklin Category: Best If a man could have just half of his wishes he would double his troubles. Benjamin Franklin Category: Wish We must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately. Benjamin Franklin Category: Hanging He who shall introduce into public affairs the principle of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world. Benjamin Franklin Category: Christianity Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former we may easily bear the latter. Benjamin Franklin Category: Idleness Most people return small favors acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones with ingratitude. Benjamin Franklin Category: Favors Haste makes waste. Benjamin Franklin Category: Cause Our friend and we were invited aboard on a party of pleasure which is to last forever. His chair was ready first and he has gone before us. We could not all conveniently start together; and why should you and I be grieved at this since we are soon to follow and know where to find him. Benjamin Franklin Category: Death I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad immoral character: like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird and withal a true original native of America. Benjamin Franklin Category: Bird Don't judge men's wealth or godliness by their Sunday appearance. Benjamin Franklin Category: Dogma Sin is not harmful because it is forbidden but it is forbidden because it is harmful. Benjamin Franklin Category: Sin To be proud of knowledge is to be blind with light. Benjamin Franklin Category: Knowledge Applause waits on success. Benjamin Franklin Category: Applause One should eat to live not live to eat. Benjamin Franklin Category: Easy Here comes the orator with his flood of words and his drop of reason. Benjamin Franklin Category: Word Fatigue is the best pillow. Benjamin Franklin Category: Sleep He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. Benjamin Franklin Category: Conceit None preaches better than the ant and she says nothing. Benjamin Franklin Category: Preach Pride is said to be the last vice the good man gets clear of. Benjamin Franklin Category: Pride It is easy to see hard to foresee. Benjamin Franklin Category: See If you do what you should not you must bear what you would not. Benjamin Franklin Category: Attain Pain wastes the Body Pleasures the Understanding. Benjamin Franklin Category: Pain Mine is better than ours. Benjamin Franklin Category: Property Distrust and caution are the parents of security. Benjamin Franklin Category: Security 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. Benjamin Franklin Category: Family Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead. Benjamin Franklin Category: Secret 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. Benjamin Franklin Category: Day It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. Benjamin Franklin Category: Desire Ere you consult your fancy consult your purse. Benjamin Franklin Category: Fashion Necessity never made a good bargain. Benjamin Franklin Category: Necessity Be sober and temperate and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous and you will be happy. Benjamin Franklin Category: Temperance Never leave that till to-morrow which you can do to-day. Benjamin Franklin Category: Present He that lives upon hope will die fasting. Benjamin Franklin Category: Hope Humility makes great men twice honorable. Benjamin Franklin Category: Humanitarian A good example is the best sermon. Benjamin Franklin Category: Example He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. Benjamin Franklin Category: Excuse Plough deep while sluggards sleep. Benjamin Franklin Category: Ambition Vessels large may venture more But little boats should keep near shore. Benjamin Franklin Category: Inferior By heaven we understand a state of happiness infinite in degree and endless in duration. Benjamin Franklin Category: Heaven Well done is twice done. Benjamin Franklin Category: Begin The man who does things makes many mistakes but he never makes the biggest mistake of all doing nothing. Benjamin Franklin Category: Mistake A long life may not be good enough but a good life is long enough. Benjamin Franklin Category: Good Success has ruin'd many a man. Benjamin Franklin Category: Success What maintains one vice would bring up two children. Benjamin Franklin Category: Vice God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer an honest man. Benjamin Franklin Category: Epitaphs There never was a good war or a bad peace. Benjamin Franklin Category: Peace Proclaim not all thou knowest all thou hast nor all thou canst. Benjamin Franklin Category: Chance It is the eyes of other people that ruin us. If all but myself were blind I should want neither a fine house nor fine furniture. Benjamin Franklin Category: Envy An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow. Benjamin Franklin Category: Egg Ben Franklin was a little stout later in life and it was said that in Paris a young woman tapping him on his protruding abdomen saidDr. Franklin if this were on a woman wed know what to think. And Franklin repliedHalf an hour ago Mademoiselle it was on a woman and now what do you think? Benjamin Franklin Category: Abdomen A good conscience is a continual Christmas. Benjamin Franklin Category: Conscience That it is better 100 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer is a maxim that has been long and generally approved. Benjamin Franklin Category: Justice In the Affairs of the World Men are saved not by Faith but by the Want of it. Benjamin Franklin Category: Faith Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors and let every new year find you a better man. Benjamin Franklin Category: War When the well is dry we know the worth of water. Benjamin Franklin Category: Prepare |
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