"Benjamin Franklin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called 'the little schoolma'am with the crazy brothers!' Robert Burns, the Scotch poet, was the son of a laboring man. Charles Dickens earned money by sticking labels in a shoe-blacking factory. William Shakespeare's father made gloves. Benjamin Franklin was the son of a candlemaker. Daniel Defoe, who wrote that Robinson Crusoe you love so much, helped his father around the butcher shop. John Bunyan was a traveling tinker. And Christopher Columbus was the son of a wool comber, and himself ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... anything I can do, Dad?" he desperately inquired one evening, after his mother had all but read him to sleep with the life of Benjamin Franklin. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... cried Tom heartily. "We'll all hang together or we'll hang separately', as Benjamin Franklin or some of those old chaps once remarked. I'm not the kind to desert a friend in the face ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... intonation—all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great American who spoke any speech but his own—except that superlatively great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin—of Boston. He didn't talk Philadelphianese. And you ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... that the nation that had time to read it could have time for anything else. The matter is of the best, but what would the prudent, wise and hard-working philosopher who founded it so many years ago—Benjamin Franklin—say if he saw its lure deflecting millions of readers from the ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... The late celebrated Dr. Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, in a letter to a Friend well known in the literary World, which I heard read, said that he was fully convinced that there was such a Current from West to East, and that he did not think that ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... been fashionable to paint the H.B. Co. as an agrarian oligarchy. Organized for the purpose of "making fur" before the time of the Habeas Corpus, two decades ahead of the Bank of England, sixty-two years before Benjamin Franklin began publishing "Poor Richard's Almanac," and a century in advance of Watt's steam-engine, it is true that The Company, throughout the years, devoted itself to peltries and not to platting town sites. This was its business. From the beginning it ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... and sugar to which our Revolutionary fathers were subjected, when compared with the taxation of the women of this republic? And again, to show that disfranchisement was precisely the slavery of which the fathers complained, allow me to cite Benjamin Franklin, who in those olden times was admitted to be good authority, not merely in domestic but ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Marat had been a very different figure—an accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much hated that he sought refuge in London ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... behoves the early practitioners of the new art to look to their reputations! By economizing the time of the public, they may squander their own good repute. It is not every printer who can afford, like Benjamin Franklin, to be a reformer; and pending the momentum when (the schoolmasters being all abroad) the grand causeway of the metropolis shall become, as it were, a moving diorama, inflicting knowledge upon the million whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... who had been in France through all the French Revolution, and had known Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier Tinville, &c. I wish that I had betimes noted down all the anecdotes I ever heard from them. There were also two old ladies, own nieces of Benjamin Franklin, who for many years continually took tea with us. One of them, Mrs. Kinsman, presented me with the cotton quilt under which her uncle had died. Another lady, Miss Louisa Nancrede, who had been ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Benjamin Franklin, who was in London in 1760 as agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly, gave the British ministers some wholesome advice on the terms of the peace that should be made with France. The St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes regions, he said, ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... great statesman, Benjamin Franklin proved that "honesty is the best policy," so many a successful woman has proved that a pleasant, tactful manner is one of the most valuable assets a girl can possess, and should be practised steadily. At home, at school, in the office and in the world in general, the girl with the courteous ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... of Congress at their last session passed a joint resolution, which originated in the House of Representatives, "presenting the thanks of Congress to Samuel T. Washington for the service sword of George Washington and the staff of Benjamin Franklin, presented by him to Congress." This resolution (in consequence, doubtless, of a merely accidental omission) did not reach me until after the adjournment of Congress, and therefore did not receive my approval and signature, which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the future journalist, correspondent and author was one of toil rather than recreation. The maxims of Benjamin Franklin in regard to idleness, thrift ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... and was followed by the appointment of a committee, on the motion of Richard Henry Lee, seconded by John Adams, to prepare a Declaration. This committee consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Jefferson and Adams were a sub-committee, and the former prepared the Declaration, at the urgent ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... strikingly, when he said that Mr. Whitefield preached like a lion. So strange a comparison conveyed no unapt a notion of the force and vehemence and passion of that oratory which awed the hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle.' Benjamin Franklin writes (Memoirs, i. 163):—'Mr. Whitefield's eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance.' He happened to be present at a sermon which, he perceived, was to finish with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... He copied plans and directions, and with a hatchet, hammer and saw attempted at home to make little things, some of which were said to have been broken up by the parents. The boy had much in mind the career of great men who had succeeded from small beginnings, and he spoke often of Benjamin Franklin, Morse, and Bell, all of whom had started in the small way he had read of in their biographies. Robert had not been content with book knowledge alone, but had sought power-houses and other places where he could see ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Holmes Benjamin Franklin "Josh Billings" "Mark Twain" Charles Dudley Warner James T. Fields Henry Ward ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... thus with men of other races subjugated by the whites. Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography tells that when he was a commissioner to the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and his fellow-commissioners agreed that they would allow the Indians no rum until the treaty they earnestly sought ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... said;—yet there is room for a gloss or commentary on what you say. "He who would bring back the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies." What you bring away from the Bible depends to some extent on what you carry to it—Benjamin Franklin! Be so good as to step up to my chamber and bring me down the small uncovered pamphlet of twenty pages which you will find lying under the "Cruden's Concordance." [The boy took a large bite, which left a very perfect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy Benjamin Franklin looked sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the bun-experiment as a part of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... outstretched to receive it. To read with the imagination, one must take time to let the figures reform in his own mind; he must see them with great distinctness and realise them with great definiteness. Benjamin Franklin tells us, in that Autobiography which was one of our earliest and remains one of our most genuine pieces of writing, that when he discovered his need of a larger vocabulary he took some of the tales ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... sovereignty, one nationality. Last of all, the commissioners who signed the treaty with the King's commissioner were not acting for the individual States, but for the United States. Three of them, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, were from the North, and Henry Laurens from the South. The separate sovereignties whose existence was so persistently alleged by Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Toombs were not represented when independence ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... better than to find his way from Copley Square to the Old South Church on Washington Street—that venerable building whose desecration by the British troops in 1775 the citizens found it so hard ever to forgive. It was here that Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706; here that Joseph Warren made a dramatic entry to the pulpit by way of the window in order to denounce the British soldiers; and here that momentous meetings were held in the heaving days before the Revolution. The Old South Church Burying Ground is now called the King's Chapel ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... of the world during the last half-century has been, and will ever continue to be, accorded to the name and genius of the illustrious American philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, for having first taught mankind that the wild and terrific ways and forces of the electric fluid, as it flies and flashes through the rent atmosphere, or descends to the surface of the earth, are guided ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... schoolmistress?—Permit me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is nullum ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... captains to help him fight his own battles. He reads of Bunker's Hill and the Declaration of Independence with constant reference to the part he shall take in the politics of the world. His motto is, Sic semper tyrannis! Benjamin Franklin, and after him John Smith,—perhaps a better man than he. We live on that perhaps. Every great man departed has played out his last card, has taken all his chances. We are glad to see his power limited and scaled up. Shakspeare, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... selecting a wife (or husband) from a family of more than one or two children was emphasized by Benjamin Franklin, and is also one of the time-honored traditions of the Arabs, who have always looked at eugenics in a very practical, if somewhat cold-blooded way. It has two advantages: in the first place, one can get a better idea of what the individual really is, by examining sisters and brothers; ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... as cunning as Niccolo Machiavelli (which means as cunning as old Nick), was quite aware of this necessity as a tax upon travellers; and at every stage, on halting, he used to stand upright in his stirrups, crying aloud, 'Gentlemen and Ladies, here I am at your service; Benjamin Franklin by name; once (but that was in boyhood) a devil; viz., in the service of a printer; next a compositor and reader to the press; at present a master-printer. My object in this journey is—to arrest a knave who ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... fifty years ago Dr. Simon Newcomb, a world-famous astronomer and the first American since Benjamin Franklin to be made an associate of the Institute of France, the hierarchy of the world science, said, "It can't be." Then he went on to explain that flight without gas bags would require the discovery of some new material or a new force ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... years before the Revolutionary War, there had been some talk of a union of colonies, beginning with the suggestions of the most far-sighted man in America, Benjamin Franklin. In 1754, when war between France and England was on the point of breaking out, there was a meeting at Albany of delegates from several colonies. They had come to see if they could make sure of the aid of the Six Nations of Indian tribes; and here the ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... than the modest tributes of our fellow-boarders,—for there was not one, I believe, who did not send something. The landlady would insist on making an elegant bride-cake, with her own hands; to which Master Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain embellishments out of his private funds,—namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and two miniature flags with the stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... was fortunate for the United States that the American Peace Commissioners were broad-minded enough to appreciate the situation and to act on their own responsibility. Benjamin Franklin, although he was not the first to be appointed, was generally considered to be the chief of the Commission by reason of his age, experience, and reputation. Over seventy-five years old, he was more universally known and admired than probably any man of his time. ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... In Benjamin Franklin's time, each householder in Philadelphia swept the pavement in front of his home if he wanted it kept clean. Franklin, who was a splendid example of good citizenship in that he was always looking for opportunities to improve ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... and graceful than the symbol of the Tree? Perhaps you would have a shop-counter, and shelves behind it, so as to instill early into the youthful mind that this is a planet of commerce! Perhaps you would abolish the doggerel of crackers, and substitute therefor extracts from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin! Perhaps you would exchange the caps for blazonry embroidered with chemical formula, your object being the advancement of science! Perhaps you would do away with the orgiastic eating and drinking, and arrange for a formal conversation about astronomy and ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... and Cassoul of Nantes, France, acted as confidential agents of the American Government during the Revolutionary period, as is shown by their correspondence with Benjamin Franklin in the Franklin Mss. collection of the American Philosophical Society.[19] Elkanah Watson was also a bearer of despatches ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse
... Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth child of a poor tallow chandler. It is altogether probable that his coming seemed a misfortune to his mother, taxed with the care of such a brood. Think what the world would have missed had he not come ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Benjamin Franklin was not unlike other boys in his love for sophomoric phrases. It is related that one day he told his father that he had swallowed some acephalus molluscus, which so alarmed him that he shrieked for help. The mother came ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... and Benjamin Franklin were well enough in their day, but the nation has made progress since then. Balloon is a man we know and can depend on to be ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Benjamin Franklin is stranger than fiction. Its realities surpass the idealities of novelists. Imagination would scarcely venture to portray such victories over poverty, obscurity, difficulties, and hardships. The tact, application, perseverance, and ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the administration of the post-office in Canada, are dated 1750, at which period the celebrated Benjamin Franklin was Deputy Postmaster-General of North America. At the time of his appointment, the revenue of the department was insufficient to defray his salary of $1500 per annum, but under his judicious management, not only was the postal accommodation in the provinces considerably extended, ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... other wares than those anciently and as I suppose then quite freshly purveyed; so far at least as freshness was imputable to the senior member of the firm, who had come down to our generation from a legendary past and with a striking resemblance of head and general air to Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Forest, under whose more particular attention I languished, had lasted on from a plainer age and, having formed, by the legend, in their youth, the taste of two or three of our New York uncles—though for what it could have been goodness only knew—was still of a trempe to whack ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... doing, in those days when the Hanoverian peasant's son, Scharnhorst, and Clausewitz were about to lay the foundations of this German army, now the most perfect machine of its kind in the world? These were the days prepared for by Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau; by Pitt and Louis XV, and George III; the days of near memories of Wolfe, Montcalm, and Clive; days when Hogarth was caricaturing London; days when the petticoats of the Pompadour swept both India and Canada into the possession of England. These names and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... cousins begin to put on airs, and to talk about autograph letters from Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson addressed to their great-great-great-grandmother, and to show beautiful carved fans and lace handkerchiefs which she carried at State balls in Philadelphia and New York, I have to bite my tongue to keep from reminding ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... will still be better remembered than any films of the current releases, which come on like newspapers, and as George Ade says:—"Nothing is so dead as yesterday's newspaper." But the first newspapers, and the first imprints of Addison's Spectator, and the first Almanacs of Benjamin Franklin, and the first broadside ballads and the like, are ever collected and remembered. And the lists of films given in books two and three of this work are the only critical and carefully sorted lists of the early motion ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... youth of both sexes will be improved, and persons of all ranks agreeably and usefully entertained."[35] With such a high conception of its functions, the Quebec Gazette launched itself twenty-four years in advance of the London Times, and fourteen years before Benjamin Franklin founded ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... and their like, and political writers with Jefferson, Webster, and their like, the list need not be a long one. Only one writer in our narrower sense of literature must be named in the earlier day—Benjamin Franklin. In the period before the Civil War must be named Edgar Allan Poe (died 1849) and Washington Irving (died 1859). The Civil War group is the large one, and its names are those of the later group as well. Let them be alphabetical, for convenience: William Cullen ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... it firmly. Never! We repeat it to parents and guardians. Never! But the fiendish tutors, chuckling in their glee, little knew what was passing through the cold, haughty intellect of Charles Francis Adams Golightly, aged ten; what curled the lip of Benjamin Franklin Jenkins, aged seven; or what shone in the bold, blue eyes of Bromley Chitterlings, aged six and a half, as they sat in the corner of the playground at recess. Their only other companion and confidant was the negro porter and janitor of the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... recommended as an easy road to French, and spent all morning learning to say, "l'orange est un fruit." I read the instructions for placing the tongue and puckering the lips and repeated les and las until I was dizzy. Then I looked through our bookcases for a life of Benjamin Franklin. I knew he had gone to ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... eight and half-past nine in the morning, a slender gentleman in an ulster, with a volume buttoned into the breast of it, may be observed leaving No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an active step. The gentleman is R. L. S.; the volume relates to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his charming essays. He descends Powell, crosses Market, and descends in Sixth on a branch of the original Pine Street Coffee House, no less; I believe he would be capable of going to the original itself, if he could only find it. In the branch he seats ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... believe that on my asking one of the principal booksellers in Naples for Filangieri's work on legislation (an immortal work which has called forth the admiration and eulogy of the greatest geniuses of the age, of which Benjamin Franklin and Sir Wm Jones spoke in the most unqualified terms of approbation; a work which has been translated into all the languages of Europe), I was told by the bookseller that he had never heard either of the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the author of that immortal document; George Wythe, afterwards Chancellor of Virginia; Francis Hopkinson, the poet and patriot Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Huntington, Edward Rutledge, and many others, have left upon record testimonials of their great obligations to their mother's care ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... foremost part in a mutinous demonstration against one of the masters; the school was broken up, and Comte like the other scholars was sent home. To the great dissatisfaction of his parents, he resolved to return to Paris (1816), and to earn his living there by giving lessons in mathematics. Benjamin Franklin was the youth's idol at this moment. 'I seek to imitate the modern Socrates,' he wrote to a school friend, 'not in talents, but in way of living. You know that at five and twenty he formed the design of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... framers finished crafting our Constitution, Benjamin Franklin stood in Independence Hall and reflected on a painting of the sun, low on the horizon. He said, "I have often wondered whether that sun was rising or setting. Today," Franklin said, "I have the happiness to know it is a rising sun." Well, today, because each generation of Americans has kept ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... us the greeting of the Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania, our native State—that prolific mother of pig-iron and coal, whose favorite and greatest sons are still Albert Gallatin, of Switzerland, and Benjamin Franklin, of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... and a New England writer in 1749 noted: "The Debtor side has had the ascendant ever since anno 1741 to the almost utter ruin of the country."[6] To this writer belongs the credit of discerning, at a time when even Benjamin Franklin was in error, that "the repeated large emissions of Paper Money" were responsible for ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... of these, our protagonists of freedom, was Benjamin Franklin. After him it were difficult to name the second. It is always difficult to find the second man; for there are several who come after. In the case of our forerunners the second may have been Thomas Jefferson; it may have been Samuel Adams; it may have been his cousin; it may have been ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... now that the eminent Benjamin Franklin did such great service to the British arms by organizing transport, and listened with astonishment to Braddock's anticipations of easy victory. The young aide-de-camp also warned the English soldier in vain. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... is familiar with Benjamin Franklin's account of his own method as related in his Autobiography, yet it will bear quotation here ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... where the patriotic feeling was not so strong at that time, and there they formed themselves into a regular military company called the "Associated Loyalists"; and this company was commanded by William Temple Franklin, son of the great Benjamin Franklin, who had been appointed Governor of New Jersey by the British Crown. He was now regarded with great hatred by the patriots of New Jersey, because he was a strong Tory. This difference of opinion between William ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... B.F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our landlady's youngest, is called BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, after the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... were laid before Parliament, and witnesses from America were examined, and among them a man who had already won a high reputation by his scientific acquirements, but who had not been previously prominent as a politician, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. He had come over to England as agent for Pennsylvania, and his examination, as preserved in the "Parliamentary History," may be taken as a complete statement of the matter in dispute from the American point of view, and of the justification which the Colonists ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... than a hundred years, it is of interest to see how irregular were the communications to and from foreign ports by mail packet. Benjamin Franklin, writing of the period 1757, mentions the following circumstances connected with a voyage he made from New York to Europe in that year. The packets were at the disposition of General Lord Loudon, then in charge of the army in America; and Franklin had to travel from Philadelphia to New York ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... its stormy career the new state had been named Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin; but a large minority had wished to call it Frankland instead, and outsiders knew it as often by one title as the other. Benjamin Franklin himself did not know that it was named after him until it had been in existence eighteen months. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a monument be procured from Paris, or other part of France, with an inscription sacred to his memory, and expressive of his amiable character and heroic achievements; and that the continental treasurer be directed to advance a sum, not exceeding three hundred pounds sterling, to Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who is desired to see this resolution properly executed, for defraying ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... next day, however, the laid ghost walked again in the shape of another petition from the "Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery," signed by its venerable president, Benjamin Franklin. This petition asked Congress to "step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."[25] Hartley of Pennsylvania called up the memorial of the preceding day, and it was read a second time ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... it,"—Roger Sherman, who "was OPPOSED to a tax on slaves imported, because it implied they were property,"—James Madison, who "thought it WRONG to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men,"—and Benjamin Franklin, who likened American slaveholders to Algerine corsairs. In the face of these unequivocal judgments, it is absurd to suppose that these eminent citizens consented unanimously to any provision by which the National Government, the creature of their hands, dedicated to freedom, could become the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... in the general mind, a sense of the value of honorable repute: it ought, therefore, to be everywhere adopted and followed. A house associated with Sir Joshua Reynolds and a house associated with Hogaith, both in Leicester Square, and houses associated with Benjamin Franklin and Peter the Great, in Craven Street; Sheridan, in Savile Row; Campbell, in Duke Street; Carrick, in the Adelphi Terrace; Mrs. Siddons, in Baker Street, and Michael Faraday, in Blandford Street, are only a few of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... He was the father of the philosophy of "practical politics." Francis Bacon learned of Machiavelli, who "wrote what men do and not what they ought to do." This is the philosophy of fact. He dealt with men as he found them. He was a sublime, almost a diabolical opportunist I have often thought Benjamin Franklin, with his "honesty is the best policy," is another Machiavelli, only touched a little with the pharisaism of the Puritan. With the Italian anything that would win is the best policy, and this is his honest estimate of men. The best policy was the policy adopted, after ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a study of our children's ideals and ambitions should be the direction of their vocational choices. We have read of Benjamin Franklin's father, who took his boys about to various shops with a view to helping them make up their minds as to what kind of trade they should follow. Nowadays we should consider this method rather crude; but for a variety of reasons most of us do not do even this much for our children. A study ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... still more difficult consideration for our average men, that while all their teachers, from Solomon down to Benjamin Franklin and the ungodly Binney, have inculcated the same ideal of manners, caution, and respectability, those characters in history who have most notoriously flown in the face of such precepts are spoken of in hyperbolical ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my whistle but disturbing all the family. My brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth ... The reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. [BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.] ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... has seen proud days in its time," went on Nyoda. "The Carvers were staunch patriots, and many a meeting of loyal citizens was held around that table in the dining room. They say that Benjamin Franklin was once a guest here. The history of the Carver family was Uncle Jasper's pet hobby, and he has it all printed up in books which you may see in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... of a trip on the Fairmount stage in this letter, well-written and interesting, but too long to have place here. In the same letter he speaks of the graves of Benjamin Franklin and his wife, which he had looked at through the iron railing of the locked inclosure. Probably it did not occur to him that there might be points of similarity between Franklin's career and his own. Yet in time these ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Boston Miscellany" for May, 1842, and had added one more to his little books, "Biographical Stories [Footnote: Biographical Stories for Children. Benjamin West, Sir Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Cromwell, Benjamin Franklin, Queen Christina. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Author of Historical Tales for Youth, Twice-Told Tales, etc. Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 114 Washington St. 1842. 18mo. Pp. v, 161. "Historical Tales for Youth" was made up by binding the three Grandfather's ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... was adopted and passed into a law, but the effect of it was null, for the journal eluded the prohibition by putting the name of Benjamin Franklin instead of James Franklin at the bottom of its columns, and this manoeuvre was supported ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... enterprise was directed against Roman Catholics, it was supposed in a peculiar manner to commend itself to Heaven. There were prayers without ceasing in churches and families, and all was ardor, energy, and confidence; while the other colonies looked on with distrust, dashed with derision. When Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia, heard what was afoot, he wrote to his brother in Boston, "Fortified towns are hard nuts to crack, and your teeth are not accustomed to it; but some seem to think that forts are as easy taken as snuff." [Footnote: Sparks, Works of Franklin, VII. 16.] It has been said of ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... in that most delightful of all books about London, The Town, tells us that No. 7 Craven Street, Strand, was once the dwelling of Benjamin Franklin, and he adds, with the manliness which is always such a curious element of his unmanliness: "What a change along the shore of the Thames in a few years (for two centuries are less than a few in the lapse of time) from the residence of a set of haughty nobles, who never dreamt that a tradesman ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, PRINTER, Like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, And stript of its lettering and gilding, Lies here, food for worms. Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and a more beautiful ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... for kings, but it is no sport for the people who pay and die, and in the long run the workers of the world must pay the cost of it. As Benjamin Franklin observed: ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... who constituted the convention.—The convention included such men as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, Edmund Randolph, and the Pinckneys. "Of the destructive element, that which can point out defects but cannot remedy them, which is eager to tear down but inapt to build up, it would be ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... stoves for cooking came into use in the home, food was cooked in open fireplaces. Even when wood was the only fuel known, a stove for burning it, called the Franklin stove, was invented by Benjamin Franklin, but not until coal came into use as fuel were iron stoves made. For a long time stoves were used mainly for heating purposes, as many housewives preferred to cook at the open fireplace. However, this method of cooking has practically disappeared and a stove ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... devoid of succulence, and boxes of starch and candles. Its only ornament is the cat, and his beauty is more apparent to the artist than to the fancier. His splendid stripes, black and grey and tawny, are too wide for noble lineage. He has a broad benignant brow, like Benjamin Franklin's; but his brooding eyes, golden, unfathomable, deny benignancy. He is large and sleek,—the grocery mice must be many, and of an appetizing fatness,—and I presume he devotes his nights to the pleasures of the chase. His days are spent in contemplation, in a serene ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... haven't had more than two wars. And it is no wonder that the ignorance of Englishmen about America and the American ignorance of England are monumental, stupendous, amazing, passing understanding. I have on my mantelpiece a statuette of Benjamin Franklin, an excellent and unmistakable likeness which was made here during his lifetime; and the inscription burnt on its base is Geo. Washington. It serves me many a good turn with my English friends. I use it as a measure of their ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... came at last, for just when matters were at their worst and the general in despair, there came to his quarters at Frederick a very famous gentleman,—more famous still in the troublous times which are upon us now,—Mr. Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, director of posts in the colonies and sometime printer of "Poor Richard." The general received him as his merit warranted, and explained to him our difficulties. Mr. Franklin, as Colonel Washington told me afterward, listened to it all with close attention, putting in ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the popular composer, in whose pieces Sophie always appeared; and Francoeur, the leader of the orchestra, were also among her guests. J. J. Rousseau was the great lion, courted and petted by all. When Benjamin Franklin arrived in Paris, where he was received with unbounded hospitality by the most distinguished of French society, he confessed that nowhere did he find such pleasure, such wit, such brilliancy, as in the salon of Mile. Arnould. M. Andre de Murville ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... to the Asiatic station, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, Lieutenant in the United States Navy, follows a custom (not at all unusual among naval officers, if Pierre Loti is to be believed) and for the summer sojourn in Japan leases a Japanese wife. (The word "wife" is a euphemism for housekeeper, companion, play-fellow, mistress, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Less than 750 different words are used in the entire series, and these, excepting the necessary geographical names, are all in the commonest use among children. The stories are of Columbus, Captain John Smith, Miles Standish, Benjamin Franklin. Mothers and teachers with children of from seven to nine years of age will give this book a hearty welcome—the teachers because the market supply is so painfully deficient in this line, and the mothers because it will so admirably solve the oft-repeated ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... (capable of counting, for they quickly learn to count) should have lost the art of counting, if they had ever possessed it. It is incredible that whole races could lose the elements of common sense, the elementary knowledge as to things material and things mental—the Benjamin Franklin philosophy—if they had ever known it. Without some data the reasoning faculties of man cannot work. As Lord Bacon said, the mind of man must 'work upon stuff.' And in the absence of the common knowledge which trains us in the elements of reason as far as we are ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... when they have become remote and shadowy. But we need not go to antiquity for epigrammatic wisdom, or for characters as racy of the fresh earth as those handed down to us from the dawn of history. He would put Benjamin Franklin against any of the sages of the mythic or the classic period. He would have been perfectly at home in ancient Athens, as Socrates would have been in modern Boston. There might have been more heroic characters at the siege of Troy than ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... commission of the Academie des Sciences, to investigate the phenomena and report upon them. The first commission was composed of the principal physicians of Paris; while, among the eminent men comprised in the latter, were Benjamin Franklin, Lavoisier, and Bailly the historian of astronomy. Mesmer was formally invited to appear before this body, but absented himself from day to day, upon one pretence or another. M. D'Eslon was more honest, because he thoroughly believed in the phenomena, which it is to be questioned ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... result the twentieth century finds few recent guides to avoid, or to follow. American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education. The student must go back, beyond Jean Jacques, to Benjamin Franklin, to find a model even of self-teaching. Except in the abandoned sphere of the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what not. This volume attempts ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the well-known one—in Washington at least—of Benjamin Franklin at the Court of France; interesting no doubt in a general way, but scarcely calculated to hold the eye at so critical an instant. Neither did the shelf below call for more than momentary attention, for it was absolutely ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... became member of the Assembly, Postmaster, and during the Revolution, while in France, induced that country to espouse our cause. If to-day the world has to thank Americans for making electricity their servant, Benjamin Franklin first discovered its most marked qualities. With a kite he brought down the spark from heaven to earth, and held it under control. Franklin died, honored by all ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 1778, and largely due to the great qualities of Benjamin Franklin, who was one of America's commissioners in France, a treaty was signed with the French providing that if France went to war with England, there should be an alliance between the French and American Governments, and neither should cease fighting ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... adoption of a measure which hath contributed so much to the reputation of the French government, it must not be forgotten, that the first thought of such a plan of conduct was probably owing to Dr Benjamin Franklin. Thus much, at least, is certain, that this eminent philosopher, when Embassador at Paris from the United States of America, preceded the court of France in issuing a similar requisition; a copy of which cannot fail of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Benjamin Franklin said: "Money never yet made a man happy, and there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness, One's personal enjoyment is a very small thing, but one's personal usefulness is a very important thing." Those only are happy who have their minds fixed upon some object other and higher than ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... lad's belongings, and remembering that in his time he had enjoyed many a pipe and 'glass o' yell' with 'owd Reuben Grieve' at the 'Brown Bess,' the worthy man actually lent him indefinitely three precious volumes—'Shirley,' 'Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography,' and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... age of thirteen a perusal of the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Horace Greeley precipitated my determination to no longer hesitate in launching my small bark upon the great ocean. I ran away from home in a truly romantic way, and placed my foot on what I expected ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... up, nothing is better than the full hot bath at bed time, or the foot bath with mustard, followed by a hot drink. It is old-fashioned, but scientific, for nine colds out of ten are due to clogged pores. Benjamin Franklin said a hundred years ago that all colds come from impure air, lack of exercise, and over-eating, and nobody has ever bettered his conclusion. Even contagious colds will not be taken if the bodily resistance is kept at par. More fresh air, less grip. Avoid people who have colds, and keep out ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... words to tell, passed instantaneously with the rapidity of light. After they were seated, some minutes were spent in common-place questions and answers, such as those which Benjamin Franklin would wisely put all together, into one formula, to satisfy curiosity. Count Altenberg landed the preceding day—had not stopped to see any one in England—had not even heard of Lord Oldborough's resignation—had proceeded directly to the Hills—had left his equipage at a town ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... In the course of his daily routine at Detroit, he could hardly help making friends on the Free Press, the greatest newspaper there. In this he resembled that other great inventor, also a great worker as a boy—Benjamin Franklin. ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... abundant records of woman's courage and patriotism, but in all the great moral movements that have convulsed the nation, she has taken an active and helpful part. The soil of Pennsylvania is classic with the startling events of the anti-slavery struggle. In the first Anti-Slavery Society, of which Benjamin Franklin was president, women took part, not only as members, but as officers. The name of Lydia Gillingham stands side by side with Jacob M. Ellis as associate secretaries, signing reports of the "Association ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... look at a certain tank in front of one store where were kept odd specimens of sea-life brought in by the Delaware Bay fishermen. He saw once there a sea-horse—just a queer little sea-animal that looked somewhat like a horse—and another time he saw an electric eel which Benjamin Franklin's discovery had explained. One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in the tank, and in connection with them was witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life and cleared things up considerably ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American philosopher, statesman, diplomatist, and author. He discovered the identity of lightning with electricity, invented the lightning-rod, went on several diplomatic missions to Europe, was one of the committee that drew up the Declaration of Independence, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... me mightily!' wrote Walter Petherick to a friend in 1682. I do not wonder. Quite apart from their singular application to his own case, they are full of nobility and grandeur. When, in 1782—exactly a century later—Benjamin Franklin was appointed American Plenipotentiary at Paris, some of the brilliant French wits of that period twitted him on his admiration for the Bible. He determined to test their knowledge of the Volume they professed to scorn. Entering their company one evening, he told them that he had been ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... "Boy's Life of Benjamin Franklin." It was that book, perhaps, that decided the boy's destiny. He read it with avidity, with enthusiasm. The impression made upon his mind was so deep and intense that his heart became fired with a fine ambition. He longed to tread in the steps of Benjamin Franklin—to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the youngest patriot, to his country, and pledged his fortune, by no means inconsiderable, in its support. The Congress, glad to avail themselves of the services of so distinguished a man, had sent him, in company with Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin, as an embassy to the court of King Louis, bearing proposals for an alliance and with a request for assistance during the deadly struggle of the colonies with the hereditary foe of France. They had been reasonably successful in a portion of their attempt, at least; as the French ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... at Oxford—chiefly seventeenth-century productions. A still older almanac was the "Poor Robin" of 1664; another seventeenth-century almanac being the "Vox Stellarum" of Francis Moore, a quack doctor. In 1733 Benjamin Franklin published in Philadelphia his "Poor Richard's Almanac," noted for its verses, jests, and sayings. The monopoly once possessed by the Stationers' Company has long been broken down, and of later almanacs and calendars there is no end. Among the miniature books, the collection of which is much favoured ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... Richard," commanded by Captain John Paul Jones. During the battle the "Alliance" twice fired into Jones' vessel and did damage. For this, on arrival in France, he was called on to make explanations and John Paul Jones, as Commodore of all American vessels in Europe, was appointed by Commissioner Benjamin Franklin, on June 16, 1780, to take "command of the 'Alliance' in her present intended voyage to America." But Silas Deane supported Landais, who ordered Jones off the vessel and set sail for America. On the voyage, his mental faculties becoming more erratic, the officers took the ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... Wild Streets are called respectively Old and New Weld Streets by Strype. Weld House stood on the site of the present Wild Court, and was during the reign of James II. occupied by the Spanish Embassy. In Great Wild Street Benjamin Franklin worked as ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... retired when he laid down the office of Governor in 1722. But his talents were too valuable to be allowed to rust in inactivity. He was appointed deputy Postmaster-General for the English colonies, and in the course of his administration made one Benjamin Franklin Postmaster for Philadelphia. He was on the point of sailing with Admiral Vernon on the expedition against Cartagena in 1740, when he was suddenly stricken and died. He was buried at Temple Farm by Yorktown. On the expedition to Cartagena went one Lawrence Washington, who named his country ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... and thirsty for truth, and in his daily life he was as abstemious as was Benjamin Franklin, whom he was to meet, know, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... it in charge from the President of the United States of America, to communicate to the National Assembly of France, the peculiar sensibility of Congress to the tribute paid to the memory of Benjamin Franklin, by the enlightened and free representatives of a great nation, in their decree of the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Benjamin Franklin ran away from home, and his family thought themselves disgraced by his printed utterances. George Washington's mother, after being told that her son had been made Commander-in-Chief, laughed knowingly and said, "They don't know him as well as I do!" Voltaire's father posted his son ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... conduct Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Clemens Bret Harte Court exertion. I love work "Do you swear?" "Not for amusement; only under pressure." Doing things and reflecting afterward Dr. Holmes's Songs in Many Keys His estimation of his own work was always unsafe ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... excellence,' in any man, come from the 'Father of lights,' and are to be ascribed to him; that, as Mr. Parker and Mr. Foxton affirm on this point, the inspiration of Paul or Milton, or even of Christ and of Benjamin Franklin, is of the same nature, and in an intelligible sense from the same source,—differing only in degree. Can you deem less, then, of that great conception by which Mr. Newman has released you, and possibly many more, from that bondage to a 'book-revelation' in which you ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... accepted its principles of individual freedom, the rational interpretation of religion, and the necessity of bringing religious beliefs into harmony with modern science and philosophy. Among these may be properly included such men as Benjamin Franklin, John Marshall, Gerrit Smith, John G. Whittier, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew D. White, and Abraham Lincoln. Whittier was a Friend, and White an Episcopalian; but the religion of both is acceptable to all Unitarians. Marshall was undoubtedly a Unitarian ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke |
