People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first. Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.

I 'spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me.

the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.

For, so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to undertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.

Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others.