Benjamin Franklin

Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.

— Benjamin Franklin

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

— Benjamin Franklin

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

— Benjamin Franklin

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means -- either may do -- the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

— Benjamin Franklin

Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

— Benjamin Franklin

Take time for all things; great haste makes great waste.

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

To lengthen thy Life, lessen thy meals.

— Benjamin Franklin

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

— Benjamin Franklin

Honesty is the best policy.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

— Benjamin Franklin

Clean your finger before you point at my spots.

— Benjamin Franklin

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.

— Benjamin Franklin

Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.

— Benjamin Franklin

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.

— Benjamin Franklin

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

— Benjamin Franklin

He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

The sleeping fox catches no poultry.

— Benjamin Franklin

I am lord of myself, accountable to none.

— Benjamin Franklin

Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.

— Benjamin Franklin

Don't judge men's wealth or godliness by their Sunday appearance.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.

— Benjamin Franklin

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country!

— Benjamin Franklin

Proclaim not all thou knowest, all thou knowest, all thou hast, nor all thou cans't.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that hath a trade hath an estate; he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor.

— Benjamin Franklin

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.

— Benjamin Franklin

She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.

— Benjamin Franklin

God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.

— Benjamin Franklin

Laws too gentle, are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

— Benjamin Franklin

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.

— Benjamin Franklin

Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.

— Benjamin Franklin

The things which hurt, instruct.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that won't be counseled can't be helped.

— Benjamin Franklin

Learn of the skillful; he that teaches himself, has a fool for his master.

— Benjamin Franklin

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

— Benjamin Franklin

Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.

— Benjamin Franklin

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

Where liberty is, there is my country.

— Benjamin Franklin

Lying rides upon debt's back.

— Benjamin Franklin

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

— Benjamin Franklin

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late

— Benjamin Franklin

Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

— Benjamin Franklin

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

— Benjamin Franklin

Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.

— Benjamin Franklin

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.

— Benjamin Franklin

One good husband is worth two good wives, for the scarcer things are, the more they are valued.

— Benjamin Franklin

Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.

— Benjamin Franklin

An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife.

— Benjamin Franklin

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

— Benjamin Franklin

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

— Benjamin Franklin

When I reflect, as I frequently do, upon the felicity I have enjoyed, I sometimes say to myself, that were the offer made me, 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

To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.

— Benjamin Franklin

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

— Benjamin Franklin

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

— Benjamin Franklin

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.

— Benjamin Franklin

Necessity never made a good bargain.

— Benjamin Franklin

Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.

— Benjamin Franklin

A little neglect may breed great mischief.

— Benjamin Franklin

Don't throw stones at your neighbors , if your own windows are glass.

— Benjamin Franklin

Love thy neighbor -- but don't pull down your hedge.

— Benjamin Franklin

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

— Benjamin Franklin

There are no gains without pains.

— Benjamin Franklin

Love well, whip well.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that can have patience can have what he will.

— Benjamin Franklin

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.

— Benjamin Franklin

He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines.

— Benjamin Franklin

There is much difference between imitating a man and counterfeiting him.

— Benjamin Franklin

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.

— Benjamin Franklin

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

— Benjamin Franklin

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

— Benjamin Franklin

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

— Benjamin Franklin

Applause waits on success.

— Benjamin Franklin

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.

— Benjamin Franklin

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

— Benjamin Franklin

Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.

— Benjamin Franklin

For the want of a nail, the shoe was lose; for the want of a shoe the horse was lose; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.

— Benjamin Franklin

One today is worth two tomorrows.

— Benjamin Franklin

Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.

— Benjamin Franklin

Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and governments.

— Benjamin Franklin

You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.

— Benjamin Franklin

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

— Benjamin Franklin

He who waits upon fortune is never sure of dinner.

— Benjamin Franklin

The best is the cheapest.

— Benjamin Franklin

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.

— Benjamin Franklin

It is foolish to lay out money for the purchase of repentance.

— Benjamin Franklin

Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never mended well.

— Benjamin Franklin

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.

— Benjamin Franklin

If your riches are yours, why don't you take them with to the other world?

— Benjamin Franklin

He who multiplies riches, multiplies cares.

— Benjamin Franklin

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

— Benjamin Franklin

Some punishment seems preparing for a people who are ungratefully abusing the best constitution and the best King any nation was ever blessed with, intent on nothing but luxury, licentiousness, power, places, pensions, and plunder; while the ministry, divided in their counsels, with little regard for each other, worried by perpetual oppositions, in continual apprehension of changes, intent on securing popularity in case they should lose favor, have for some years past had little time or inclination to attend to our small affairs, whose remoteness makes them appear even smaller.

— Benjamin Franklin

Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences.

— Benjamin Franklin