"The first mistake in public business is the going into it."
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Benjamin Franklin quotes (page 45 of 70)
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"But they have two other Rights; those of sitting when they please, and as long as they please, in which methinks they have the advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the Breath of a Minister, or sent packing as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together."
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"I say it is impossible that so sensible a people [citizens of Paris], under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing."
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"Let thy discontents be thy secrets"
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"If Jack's in love, he's no judge of Jill's beauty."
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"In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates."
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"If your riches are yours, why don't you take them with you to the other world?"
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"Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals."
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"Here's to our beloved George Washington, the Joshua of America, who commanded the sun and the moon to stand still - and they obeyed."
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"That Quantity that is sufficient, the Stomach can perfectly concoct and digest, and it sufficeth the due Nourishment of the Body."
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"Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in."
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"Virtues, of ... Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve."
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"The importation of foreigners into a country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provisions for subsistence will bear, will be in the end no increase of people, unless the new comers have more industry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country for such vacancy will soon be filled by natural generation."
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"Covetousness is ever attended with solicitude and anxiety."
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"Industry need not wish."
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"In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it."
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"Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others."
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"We may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport."
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"The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candle of industry and economy."
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"To be thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previosly unsusceptible."
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