Benjamin Franklin

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.

If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don't wait for time.

Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic.

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

The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars.

He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face. - Ben Franklin

Necessity never made a good bargain.

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

Anger and folly walk cheeck by jowl.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

If you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas.

All would live long, but none would be old.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.

Everybody's human-everybody makes mistakes. If you laugh it off and keep going and try to give it your best the next time around, people respect that.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.

One good husband is worth two good wives, for the scarcer things are, the more they are valued.

Virtue and Happiness are Mother and Daughter.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Ben Franklin was a little stout later in life and it was said that in Paris a young woman, tapping him on his protruding abdomen, said,"Dr. Franklin, if this were on a woman, we'd know what to think." And Franklin replied,"Half an hour ago, Mademoiselle, it was on a woman, and now what do you think?"