Benjamin Franklin Quotes

510 Sourced Quotes

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

Benjamin Franklin
For my own Part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring Favours, but as paying Debts. In my Travels, and since my Settlement, I have received much Kindness from Men, to whom I shall never have any Opportunity of making the least direct Return. And numberless Mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our Services. Those Kindnesses from Men, I can therefore only Return on their Fellow Men; and I can only shew my Gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other Children and my Brethren. For I do not think that Thanks and Compliments, tho' repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator.

Benjamin Franklin
Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes it.

Benjamin Franklin
But your Squabbles about a Bishop I wish to see speedily ended. … Each Party abuses the other, the Profane and the Infidel believe both sides, and enjoy the Fray; the Reputation of Religion in general suffers, and its enemies are ready to say, not what was said in the primitive Times, Behold how these Christians love one another, but, Mark how these Christians hate one another! Indeed when religious People quarrel about Religion, or hungry People about their Victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.

Benjamin Franklin
Old boys have their playthings as well as young ones; the difference is only in the price.

Benjamin Franklin
The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.

Benjamin Franklin
Silence is not always a sign of wisdom, but babbling is ever a mark of folly.

Benjamin Franklin
Grief for a dead Wife, and a troublesome Guest, Continues to the threshold, and there is at rest; But I mean such wives as are none of the best

Benjamin Franklin
Whilst the last members were signing it Doctor Franklin looking towards the President's Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.

Benjamin Franklin
Were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first.

Benjamin Franklin
I have so much faith in the general government of the world by Providence that I can hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance [as the framing of the Constitution]... should be suffered to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent Ruler in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being.

Benjamin Franklin
What is a butterfly? At best
He's but a caterpiller drest.
The gaudy Fop's his picture just.

Benjamin Franklin
Unless the Stream of their Importation could be turned... they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have, will not in my Opinion be able to preserve our Language, and even our Government will become precarious.

Benjamin Franklin
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Benjamin Franklin
A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.

Benjamin Franklin
God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.

Benjamin Franklin
He that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night.

Benjamin Franklin
He that drinks his Cyder alone, let him catch his Horse alone.

Benjamin Franklin
To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers.

Benjamin Franklin
From a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books.

Benjamin Franklin
Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden,
but it is forbidden because it is hurtful.

Benjamin Franklin
But I must own that I am much in the Dark about Light. I am not satisfy'd with the doctrine that supposes particles of matter call'd light continually driven off from the Sun's Surface, with a Swiftness so prodigious!

Benjamin Franklin
I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.

Benjamin Franklin
If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.

Benjamin Franklin
A full Belly makes a dull Brain: The Muses starve in a Cook's Shop.

Benjamin Franklin
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.

Benjamin Franklin
If you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors.

Benjamin Franklin
Setting too good an example is a kind of slander seldom forgiven.

Benjamin Franklin
Duty is not beneficial because it is commanded,
but is commanded because it is beneficial.

Benjamin Franklin
Epitaph for himself:
The body
of Benjamin Franklin, printer,
Lies here, food for worms!
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will, as he believed, appear once more
In a new
And more beautiful edition,
Corrected and amended
By its Author!

Benjamin Franklin