Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, “the greatest prodigality'; since, as he elsewhere tells us, 'Lost time is never found again'; and 'What we call time enough always proves little enough'. Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

It's better to swim in the sea below Than to swing in the air and feed the crow, Says jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.

Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it.

Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money

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.