Manly natural religion - it is not joining the Church; it is not to believe in a creed, Hebrew, Protestant, Catholic, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Nothingarian. It is not to keep Sunday idle; to attend meetings; to be wet with water; to read the Bible; to offer prayers in words; to take bread and wine in the meeting house; love a scape-goat Jesus, or any other theological clap-trap.

All men desire to be immortal.

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business.

Greatness is its own torment.

You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.

The miraculous revelation of the Old Testament and the New, the miracles of famous men, Jews, Gentiles, or Christians, — then Franklin had no religion at all; and it would be an insult to say that he believed in the popular theology of his time, or of ours, for I find not a line from his pen indicating any such belief.

Silence is a figure of speech, unanswerable, short, cold, but terribly severe.