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Famous quotes from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin


  • 1."Look round the habitable world, how fewKnow their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!"_
  • 2."There will be sleeping enough in the grave."_
  • 3."Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself"
  • 4."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."
  • 5."A perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance."
  • 6."A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of being thought to have but little."
  • 7."Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest."
  • 8."... the Existence of Deity, that he made the World, and govern'd it by his Providence; that the most acceptable Service of God was the doing Good to Man; that our Souls are immortal; and that all Crime will be punished and Virtue rewarded either here or hereafter..."
  • 9."Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations get corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
  • "_ 10."But on the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, their hand is mended by the endevour, and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible"

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