Benjamin Franklin

Well done is better than well said.

Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes.

Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.

By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

God helps those who help themselves.

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

If you would be loved love and be loveable.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

You may delay but time will not.

A brother may not be a friend, but a friend will always be a brother.   

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Time is money.

Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75.

Lost time is never found again.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Where liberty is, there is my country.

There was never a good war or a bad peace.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?

Beware the hobby that eats.

At twenty years of age the will reigns, at thirty the wit, and at forty the judgment.

I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

Industry need not wish.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

Applause waits on success.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.

Each year one vicious habit discarded in time might make the worst of us good.

Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.

To lengthen thy life lessen thy meals.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors and let every new year find you a better man.

Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

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

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one's self.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation and only one bad one to lose it.

God works wonders now and then, Behold a lawyer an honest man.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

Never confuse motion with action.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

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.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

He that speaks much is much mistaken.

I guess I don't so much mind being old as I mind being fat and old.

Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain, the lazy one never.

He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner.

Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her.

As we must account for every idle word so must we account for every idle silence.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

He does not possess wealth, it possesses him.

Remember that credit is money.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success, have no meaning.

Mine is better than ours.

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults or resolution enough to mend them.

Honesty is the best policy.

Fatigue is the best pillow.

If a man empties his purse into his head no one can take it from him.

We are all born ignorant but one must work hard to remain stupid.

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Content makes poor men rich, discontent makes rich men poor.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means - either may do - the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

When in doubt, don't.

She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.

Hunger is the best pickle.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

Those that won't be counseled can't be helped.

Marriage is the most natural state of man and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

He that raises a large family does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow, but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Observe all men, thyself most.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

Money has never made man happy nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has, the more one wants.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries.

Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones - with ingratitude.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it I get up.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness, and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

Eat to please thyself but dress to please others.

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

He that won't be counseled can't be helped.

He that's secure is not safe.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

For having lived long I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions, even on important subjects which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

If you would have a faithful servant and one that you like, serve yourself.

There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.

If a man could have half of his wishes he would double his troubles.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed, too severe seldom executed.

When you're finished changing, you're finished.

He that rises late must trot all day.

Distrust and caution are the parents of security.

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading, or do things worth writing.

When befriended remember it, when you befriend forget it.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.

Employ thy time well if thou meanest to gain leisure.

Games lubricate the body and the mind.

Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom but forced by the occasion.

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that don't have brains enough to be honest.

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it is.

Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

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

The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.

And whether you're an honest man or whether you're a thief depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain, but ever while you live expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.

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

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

Tomorrow every fault is to be amended, but that tomorrow never comes.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

I saw few die of hunger, of eating a hundred thousand.

The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

Nine men in ten are would be suicides.

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

Those disputing contradicting and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.

Many foxes grow gray, but few grow good.

A place for everything, everything in its place.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction, like that of religion, which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.