Benjamin Franklin Quotes

The two most beautiful sights I have witnessed in my life are a full blown ship at sail and the round-bellied pregnant female.

Christianity commands us to pass by injuries; policy, to let them pass by us.

Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried with fewer tensions and more tolerance.

Marriage is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which one is most likely to find solid happiness.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil.

The United States Constitutional Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.

Rules too soft are seldomly followed; rules too harsh are seldomly executed.

Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.

If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.

A little neglect may breed great mischief. ... For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the battle was lost; for want of the battle, the war was lost.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know.... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors.

A fine genius in his own country is like gold in the mine.

So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a grout at last.

Speak little, do much.

Hope and faith may be more firmly built upon charity, than charity upon faith and hope.

What is the use of a new-born child ?

To be thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previosly unsusceptible.

What signifies knowing the Names, if you know not the Natures of things.

Hope is an essential constituent of human life.

Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes

Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.

Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.

Men are subject to various inconveniences merely through lack of a small share of courage, which is a quality very necessary in the common occurrences of life, as well as in a battle. How many impertinences do we daily suffer with great uneasiness, because we have not courage enough to discover our dislike.

Much Virtue in Herbs, little in Men.

Annual giving is the custom of making a gift-a-year to an institution in which one has faith.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, make the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.

The devil wipes his breech with poor folks' pride.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Grace thou thy house and let not that grace thee.

The Difficulty lies, in finding out an exact Measure but eat for Necessity, not Pleasure, for Lust knows not where Necessity ends.

Suspicion may be no fault, but showing it may be a great one.

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

When nature gave us tears, She gave us leave to weep.

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.

I've striven my whole life for humility, but if I'd ever achieved it, I'd probably be pretty damn proud of that.

A good spouse and health is a person's best wealth.

If you want a neat wife, choose her on a Saturday.

He that lives well, is learned enough.

Great talkers, little doers.

Virtue may not always make a Face handsome, but Vice will certainly make it ugly.

... there is much truth in the Italian saying, 'Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.'

Force shites upon Reason's Back.

To the generous mind the heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when it is not in our power to repay it.

All would live long, but none would be old.

If you would not be forgotten, do things worth remembering.