Benjamin Franklin Quotes
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.
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 of the first.
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; i.e. waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become rich.
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
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Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
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Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
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Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
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Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
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Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
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Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
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Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
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Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
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Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
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Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; with them, everything.
Doing good to men is the only service of God in our power; and to imitate his beneficence is to glorify him.
As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.
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.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
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.
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools that have not the wits enough to be honest.
In general, mankind, since the improvement in cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.
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