Benjamin Franklin Quotes

When you taste honey, remember gall.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Love your Neighbour; yet don't pull down your Hedge.

The things of this world take up too much of my time, of which indeed I have too little left, to undertake anything like a reformation in religion.

To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.

I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them.

Pay what you owe and you'll know what's your own.

You can't tell anyone anything. You have to teach people for them to remember. Let the person experience what you are teaching and they will learn.

Indeed, when religious people quarrel about religion, or hungry people quarrel about victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.

Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge

Keep flax from fire, and youth from gaming.

There's many witty men whose brains can't fill their bellies.

What maintains one vice would bring up two children.

Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.

In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

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

I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.

Be not sick too late, nor well too soon

Success has ruined many a man.

Let thy discontents be thy secrets

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

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

Blame-all and Praise-all are two blockheads.

The Sting of a reproach, is the Truth of it.

Speak with contempt of none, from slave to king, The meanest Bee hath, and will use, a sting.

I am in the prime of senility.

Virtue may not always make a Face handsome, but Vice will certainly make it ugly.

Electrical matter differs from common matter in this, that the parts of the latter mutually attract, those of the former mutually repel each other.

If any man flatters me, I'll flatter him again; tho' he were my best Friend.

Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.

He that speaks ill of the mare will buy her.

What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be.

If Pride leads the Van, Beggary brings up the Rear.

A wicked Hero will turn his back to an innocent coward.

By diligence and patience, the mouse bit in two the cable.

Covetousness is ever attended with solicitude and anxiety.

The wise man draws more advantage from his enemies than the fool from his friends

Many have quarreled about religion that never practice it.

The things which hurt, instruct.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

Let thy vices die before thee.

I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of Faults than I had imagined, but I had the Satisfaction of seeing them diminish.

Epitaph on a scolding wife by her husband: Here my poor Bridget's corpse doth lie, she is at rest - and so am I!

There's no gain, without pain.

A full Belly makes a dull Brain: The Muses starve in a Cook's Shop.

In prosperous fortunes be modest and wise, The greatest may fall, and the lowest may rise: But insolent People that fall in disgrace, Are wretched and nobody pities their Case.