Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

“Silentiarius: The Silent Sufferer.”

“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”

A secret to being more revered than resented, he learned, was to display (at least when he could muster the discipline) a self-deprecating humor, unpretentious demeanor, and unaggressive style in conversation.

“He wished to please everybody,” Franklin later said of Keith, “and having little to give, he gave expectations.”

“leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy men as are pleased to honor me with their friendship.”

being unwilling to give pain where I could not give pleasure.”

Unlike many subsequent revolutions, the American was not a radical rebellion by an oppressed proletariat. Instead, it was led largely by propertied and shopkeeping citizens whose rather bourgeois rallying cry was “No taxation without representation.”

“A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

“It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright,”