Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.
- Topic: Character, Fortune, Victory
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Benjamin Franklin
He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.
The surest way to relieve a man of his poverty is to make him uncomfortable in it.
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Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
One can acquire everything in solitude—except character.
Oh, I offended you with my opinion? You should hear the the ones I keep to myself.
To educate in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
So it is more useful to watch a man in time of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask it torn off, reality remains.
An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.
A fair character is a fair fortune.
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence.
The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.
America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.
Master of human destinies am I! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.
Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
