Famous quotes containing the words benjamin franklin, benjamin, franklin and/or class:
“The Great Spirit, who made all things, made every thing for some use, and whatever use he designed anything for, that use it should always be put to. Now, when he made rum, he said “Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with,” and it must be so.”
—Native American elder. Quoted in Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, ch. 8 (written 1771-1790, published 1868)
“Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“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. This sum may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
“There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)