Sublime

Since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.

The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's self as the proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise one's reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefor

And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature,—that for a subscription library. [n] I drew up the proposals, got them put into form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and, by the help of my friends in the Junto, procured fifty subscribers of forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our compan

“The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”

The difference between Franklin’s unconventional work and Abagnale’s was that the former managed to create value for others while the latter cheated others. Franklin’s approach was a lateral

Like Ben Franklin observed, “It’s hard for an empty sack to stand upright.”

“Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations,” Tocqueville famously marveled. “Hospitals, prisons and schools take shape this way.”

“The industry of that Franklin is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed.”

Get what you can, and what you get hold, 'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.