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 was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.
- Topic: Action, Learning
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Benjamin Franklin
How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave.
Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
Speak not, but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
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The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
What you are not, you can never be, until and unless you do something about it.
I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand.
I kept always two books in my pocket: one to read, one to write in.
Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature; it is our future that lays down the law of our today.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.