Benjamin Franklin quotes:

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Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
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.
Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.
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.
Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom - and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.
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.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.
It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.
A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
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.'
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.
Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.
If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
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.
The doors of wisdom are never shut.
To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.
Half a truth is often a great lie.
There cannot be a stronger natural right than that of a man's making the best profit he can of the natural produce of his lands.
The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.
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.
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?
I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one's temper and disturb one's quiet.
A false friend and a shadow attend only while the sun shines.
At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
The first mistake in public business is the going into it.
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
There was never a good war, or a bad peace.
The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.
Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.
A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
He that can have patience can have what he will.
Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.
When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.
If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.
If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.
The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.
Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.
As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
Don't throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.
Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.
Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
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.
Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.
All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.
God helps those who help themselves.
He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.
Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones - with ingratitude.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75.
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.
I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.
Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.
Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Beauty and folly are old companions.
You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?
How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
Games lubricate the body and the mind.
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.
Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
Well done is better than well said.
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.
The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.
If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins.
We are not so sensible of the greatest Health as of the least Sickness.
I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.
He that lives upon hope will die fasting."
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria."
O powerful goodness! Bountiful Father! Merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favours to me."
Where liberty is, there is my country.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
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, said,"Dr. Franklin, if this were on a woman, we'd know what to think." And Franklin replied,"Half an hour ago, Mademoiselle, it was on a woman, and now what do you think?"
The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.
If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth. Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle.
Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.
Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no persuasion move thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollity; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
Anger and folly walk cheek by sole.
It is a strange anomaly that men could be careful to insure their houses, their ships, their merchandise, and yet neglect to insure their lives - surely the most important of all to their families, and more subject to loss.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Applause waits on success.
When the well is dry, people know the worth of water. [so appreciate what you have while you have it]
Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.
When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?
Courteous Reader, Astrology is one of the most ancient Sciences, held in high esteem of old, by the Wise and the Great. Formerly, no Prince would make War or Peace, nor any General fight in Battle, in short, no important affair was undertaken without first consulting an Astrologer.
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.
Little minds think and talk about people. Average minds think and talk about things and actions. Great minds think and talk about ideas.

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