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“Fish and guests stink after three days.”
His main motive was financial: it enabled him to take the money his brother allotted him for food and save half for books.
people are more likely to admire your work if you’re able to keep them from feeling jealous of you.
he was less good at nurturing lasting bonds that involved deep personal commitments or emotional relationships, even within his own family.
He had left England years earlier deeply in debt, made a small fortune in America, and on his return to England threw a lavish dinner for his old creditors. After thanking them profusely, he told them all to look under their plates. There they discovered full repayment plus interest.
slow and steady diligence is the true way to wealth.
“If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.”
“Lost time is never found again.”
To distress is to weaken, and weakening the children weakens the whole family.”
“human felicity is produced . . . by little advantages that occur every day.”
Among the most amusing of his inventions was a musical instrument he called the armonica.
America was creating a society, Franklin proclaimed, where a “mere man of Quality” who does not want to work would be “despised and disregarded,” while anyone who has a useful skill would be honored.
Franklin perfected one of his most famous and useful inventions: bifocal glasses.
Elbridge Gerry, arguing against a large standing army, lasciviously compared it to a standing penis: “An excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”
It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others.
“nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.”)
“It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright,”
