Inspirational Quotes by Benjamin Franklin
“if you judge a book by its cover,a fish will be thinking how stupid it looks its whole life.”
“Here in France, you must practice the art of accomplishing much while appearing to accomplish little. (in the John Adams miniseries on HBO)”
“I do not find that I grow any older. Being arrived at seventy, and considering that by traveling further in the same road I should probably be led to the grave, I stopped short, turned about, and walked back again; which having done these four years, you may now call me sixty-six. Advise those old friends of ours to follow my example; keep up your spirits, and that will keep up your bodies.”
“Of learned Fools I have seen ten times ten, Of unlearned wise men I have seen a hundred.”
“What condition of man most deserves pity?" - Franklin offered: "A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.”
“By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be growing old.”
topics: humor
“The body of B. Franklin, Printer; Like the cover of an old book (it's contents torn out, and stript of its lettering and guilding), lies here, food for worms But the work shall not be wholly lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more, in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and amended, by the Author.”
“The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken.”
“If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some; for He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing, as Poor Richard says;”
“Industry need not wish, and he who lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains; then help hands, for I have no lands”
― Benjamin Franklin ,
from The Way to Wealth
“Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains; then help hands, for I have no lands;”
― Benjamin Franklin ,
from The Way to Wealth
“That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, [...] Since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down into writing.”
“In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles".”
“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.”
“In the 1770s, when he was in Paris, Benjamin Franklin witnessed the flight of one of the first hot-air balloons. As the balloon soared into the air, someone asked Franklin: “What good is it?” Franklin responded: “What good is a new-born baby?”
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Benjamin Franklin was an important conservative figure in the American Restoration Movement, especially as the leading antebellum conservative in the northern United States branch of the movement. He is notable as the early and lifelong mentor of Daniel Sommer, whose support of the 1889 Sand Creek Declaration set in motion events which led to the formal division of the Churches of Christ from the Disciples of Christ in 1906.
According to contemporary biographies "His early religious training was according to the Methodist faith, though he never belonged to any church until he united with the Disciples."
In 1856, Franklin began to publish the ultra-conservative American Christian Review, which he published until his death in 1878. Its influence, initially considerable, was said to have waned following the American Civil War. Franklin undertook a rigorous program of publication correspondence, and traveling lectures which took him to "many" U. S. states and Canada.
Franklin's last move was to Anderson, Indiana, where he lived from 1864 until his death.