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Benjamin Franklin Quotes
Benjamin Franklin Quotes IndexAdvice
"Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man." "Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good." "Games lubricate the body and the mind." "He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees." "Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?" "Honesty is the best policy." "Necessity never made a good bargain." "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." "Well done is better than well said." "When in doubt, don't." "Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble." "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Age"At twenty years of age the will reigns; "Life's Tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." "Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Anger"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame." "Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Being Industrious"It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Being Lazy"A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave." "Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Being Organized"A place for everything, everything in its place." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Being Prepared"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Eating"To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals." "I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand. Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others." "Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Faith"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason." "To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Family"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." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Freedom"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature." "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes FriendsBe slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing. "Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them." "When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it." "There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Happiness"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." "The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Humorous"Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days." "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." "A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one." "I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong." "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." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Insightful"God helps those who help themselves." "Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." "He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged." "Half a truth is often a great lie." "He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else." "How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them." "There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous." "It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it." "Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed." "There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self." "When you're finished changing, you're finished." "Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning." "Distrust and caution are the parents of security." "Our necessities never equal our wants." "The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse." "The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands." "The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice." "The discontented man finds no easy chair." "Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody." "Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones." "To find out a girl’s faults, praise her to her girl friends. Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." "A good conscience is a continual Christmas." "A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges." "A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Knowledge/Wisdom"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." "Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn." "Genius without education is like silver in the mine." "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." "The doors of wisdom are never shut." "The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance." "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." "Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Liberty"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." "Where liberty is, there is my country." "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." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Marriage"Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards." "Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness." "Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in." "Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Money"A penny saved is a penny earned." "Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship." "Creditors have better memories than debtors." "He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money." "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." "Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt." "Remember that credit is money." "The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Profound"Observe all men, thyself most." "Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor." "Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?" "Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow." "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." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Self-Control"He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Success"Diligence is the mother of good luck." "Energy and persistence conquer all things." "He that can have patience can have what he will." "To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions." "Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Time"Time is money." "You may delay, but time will not." "Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste." "Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure." "Lost time is never found again." "Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today." "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." "One today is worth two tomorrows." "Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes War"There was never a good war, or a bad peace." "Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later." "When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?" "All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Warnings"Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities." "He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed." "He that lives upon hope will die fasting." "He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner." "He that won't be counseled can't be helped." "Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her." "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." "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." "He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas." "He’s a fool who cannot conceal his wisdom." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Wealth"He does not possess wealth; it possesses him." "It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth." "Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it." "Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody." "Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Your Words"He that speaks much, is much mistaken." "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." "Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody." "As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence." Return to Index of Benjamin Franklin Quotes Return to Quotes by Famous People - from Benjamin Franklin Quotes
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The Dash
It's not the date you were born, or the date you died, that really matters. It's "the dash" between those years and what you do with it, to make a difference with your life.
