The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

by 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.

time. I was surpris'd to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined;

Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!

I wonder'd much how such a man came to be intrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but, having since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining, and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished.