"Benjamin Franklin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for American literature would place as leaders in letters: Thomas Hooker or Thomas Shepard, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Philip Freneau, Noah Webster or James Kent, James Fenimore Cooper or Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson or Edward Everett, Joseph Addison Alexander or William Ellery Channing, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... blood of kings and 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... documents. They are the autobiographies of communities. The personalities of Topeka, Kansas, of Limoges, France, and of Heidelberg, Germany, rise before the impressionable student of municipal documents like the figures of personal autobiography, like Benvenuto Cellini, Marie Bashkirtsev, Benjamin Franklin, Miss Mary Maclane, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... a most interesting experiment with his sulphur globe and a feather, and in doing so came near anticipating Benjamin Franklin in his discovery of the effects of pointed conductors in drawing off the discharge. Having revolved and stroked his globe until it repelled a bit of down, he removed the globe from its rack and advancing it towards ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... been ordered 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, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... preternatural; that every 'holy thought,' every 'lofty and sublime conception,' all 'truth and 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' ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... no less notable a personage than Benjamin Franklin, who, much to the after-advantage of the Quaker City, had run away from too severe an apprenticeship in Boston, failed to obtain employment in New York, and learned that work might be had in Philadelphia. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... writings of Benjamin Franklin were of marked importance in promoting sanitary science and in securing the building of the first chartered hospital in the United States, which was erected in Philadelphia in 1755. The record shows four hundred and thirty-five patients ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... chapter mention was made of gypsum as a compound of lime, but no reference to its action as a manure was made. In the past, gypsum was used extensively and highly valued. It was found to be of especial value for clover; and there is a story told of Benjamin Franklin which illustrates the very striking nature of its action on this crop. It is related that he once printed with gypsum the words "This has been plastered" on a field of clover, and that for a long time afterwards the legend was plainly discernible on account of the luxuriance ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... France. The outcome of the Seven Years' War had been most lamentable for that country, and any trouble which came to her old enemy England could not but be a source of congratulation to the French. The United States regarded France as her natural ally and immediately sent Benjamin Franklin to Versailles with the hope of obtaining the aid of the new French king, Louis XVI. The king's ministers were doubtful whether the colonies could long maintain their resistance against the overwhelming strength of the mother country. It was only after the Americans had defeated Burgoyne at Saratoga ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... touch with the disaffected people to the south. It also had a magistrate of the name of Walker, the most rancorous of all the disaffected magistrates in Canada. This Walker, well mated with an equally rancorous wife, was the same man who entertained Benjamin Franklin and the other commissioners sent by Congress into Canada in 1776, the year in which both the American Republic and a truly British Canada were born. He would not have been flattered could he have seen ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... traffic under heavy penalty, and affirming that this trade was "highly beneficial to the colonies, as well as remunerative to the throne." Growing more antagonistic to slavery, the planters of Fairfax County called a convention at which Washington presided. Later, in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin brought in the resolutions condemning slavery as "a wicked, cruel and unjustifiable trade." Soon the leading men of the Southern colonies sent a formal protest to England. Lord Mansfield supported them in a decision that in English countries, governed by English ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 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 by positive and fixed laws, as much as the movements of more sluggish matter in the physical ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... in the books on electricity, a mere ordinary matter of positive and negative, density and potential, to be measured in ohms (whatever they may be), and partially imitated with Leyden jars and red sealing-wax apparatus. Why, did not Benjamin Franklin, a fat old gentleman in ill-fitting small clothes, bring it down from the clouds with a simple door-key, somewhere near Philadelphia? and does not Mr. Robert Scott (of the Meteorological Office) calmly predict its ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the great bookmaking centers languished when they began to scamp. That worthy wordissimus at Frankfort who called Erasmus names gave up business and then the ghost, and Erasmus wrote his epitaph, and thus supplied Benjamin Franklin an idea—"Here lies an old book, its cover gone, its leaves torn, the worms at ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... the west end, we note on the north side the Golden Cross Hotel, rebuilt. This is the successor of a famous old coaching inn, which stood further west. On the south side is Craven Street, formerly Spur Alley, where once Benjamin Franklin lived at No. 7. The site of Hungerford Market is now covered by the Charing Cross railway-station. In Charing Cross station-yard is a modern reproduction of the original Queen Eleanor's Cross. The market ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... of 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 Income ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... Mather in the Harvard Yard, but the liberal party are soon to force Mather from the Presidency and to refuse that office to his son. In the town of Boston, once hermetically sealed against heresy, there are Baptist and Episcopal churches—and a dancing-master. Young Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, professes a high respect for the Mathers, but he does not go to church, "Sunday being my studying day," and neither the clerical nor the secular arm of Boston is long enough and strong enough to compel ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... 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 ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... upon our lives and history and literature 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Jr., author of the lives of Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. in their "American Statesmen Series," and editor of this series, writes as ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... talk may suggest to many of the younger hearers the secret of the true greatness of Benjamin Franklin, who is considered by many our ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... Mr. and Miss Ludolph came in, and paused at the table. Dennis, unnoticed, stood behind Benjamin Franklin and Joan of Arc, placed lovingly together on another counter, face to face, as if in mutual admiration, and from his hiding-place watched the scene before him with intense anxiety. One thought only filled his mind—Would they approve or condemn his taste? for he had ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the nineteenth century. When about fifteen years old he entered a Catholic school at Aberdeen expecting to enter the clergy, but after an academic life of two or three years he abandoned the idea. This sudden change was in no small degree influenced by an edition of "Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography" which was published in Edinburgh about this time. He was greatly taken with the spirit of this volume which found sympathy in his thrifty Scotch nature. From the moment he finished this life of Franklin he determined to come to America, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... report of this first aerial voyage was drawn up by scientific observers, among other signatures to it being that of Benjamin Franklin. ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... the "Benjamin Franklin," I found on this occasion every berth already taken: the captain, however, resigned his room to me with much good-will; so my mischance proved fortunate, as I found myself installed in a neat cabin having a window opening on the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... the men were more apt, however, to have had experience in warring against white desperadoes and law-breakers than against Indians. Some of our best recruits came from Colorado. One, a very large, hawk-eyed man, Benjamin Franklin Daniels, had been Marshal of Dodge City when that pleasing town was probably the toughest abode of civilized man to be found anywhere on the continent. In the course of the exercise of his rather lurid functions as peace-officer he had lost half of one ear—"bitten off," it was explained to me. Naturally, ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... Mayhew's Young Benjamin Franklin; or, the Right Road through Life. A Story to show how Young Benjamin Learned the Principles which Raised him from a Printer's Boy to the First Embassador of the American Republic. A Boy's Book on a Boy's Own Subject. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... thank you, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... see the marabou stork on his nightly ran-tan, if only to gloat over his lapse of dignity, just as one would give much to see Benjamin Franklin with his face blacked, drunk and disorderly and being locked up. But, as a shocking example, the marabou is quite bad enough with his awful head in the morning; his awful head and his disreputable nose, that looks to want a good scraping. I respect Billy, the adjutant, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Child" Hartley Coleridge The World I am Passing Through Lydia Maria Child Terminus Ralph Waldo Emerson Rabbi Ben Ezra Robert Browning Human Life Audrey Thomas de Vere Young and Old Charles Kingsley The Isle of the Long Ago Benjamin Franklin Taylor Growing Old Matthew Arnold Past John Galsworthy Twilight A. Mary F. Robinson Youth and Age George Arnold Forty Years On Edward Ernest Bowen Dregs Ernest Dowson The Paradox of Time Austin Dobson Age William Winter Omnia Sonmia ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... with Admiral Porter of the navy, who had already visited Santo Domingo, and who gave me valuable points as to choosing routes and securing information. Another person with whom I had some conversation was Benjamin Franklin Butler, previously a general in the Civil War, and afterward governor of Massachusetts—a man of amazing abilities, but with a certain recklessness in the use of them which had brought him into nearly universal discredit. His ideas regarding the annexation of Santo ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... over-refined lineaments of the sculptured bust close at hand. In a room not far away, to reach which one passes a score or two of portraits and as many busts of celebrities—including, by-the-bye, both bust and portrait of Benjamin Franklin—one finds a cabinet containing other mementos similar to those on the library tables. Here is the first model of Davy's safety-lamp; there a chronometer which aided Cook in his famous voyage round the world. This is Wollaston's celebrated "Thimble Battery." It will slip readily ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... which Benjamin Franklin was president, having met and deliberated, and agreed upon a constitution, they next ordered it to be published, not as a thing established, but for the consideration of the whole people, their approbation or rejection, and then adjourned to ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Mafflin, Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Don't wait for it to develop. To break it 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 ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... treachery," said Benjamin Franklin, "are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest." Had the kindly philosopher been familiar with all the exigencies of the criminal law he might have added a qualification to this somewhat general, if indisputably moral, maxim. Though it doubtless remains true ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... like many another printer's boy, he had caught the influence of the atmosphere of letters, and was educated, self-educated, of course, to a degree far beyond his position. When she looked at him, and listened to him, Elizabeth involuntarily thought of Benjamin Franklin, and of many more who had raised themselves from the ink-pot and the compositor's desk to fame and eminence, and she fancied that such might be the lot of "little Tommy Cliffe." Why not? If so, how excessively proud ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... 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
... Jay, a successful N.Y. merchant, had a notable career. He was Chairman of the Commission which drafted the N.Y. State Constitution in 1777. In the same year he was made Chief Justice of the State. In negotiating peace with Great Britain (1783) he acted with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson and Henry Laurens, and he is credited with having been influential in obtaining favorable terms for the former colonies. In 1789 Washington appointed him chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, in which capacity he served for ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... of the primary social documents of America. It is as much Davy Crockett, whether going ahead after bears in a Tennessee canebrake or going ahead after General Andrew Jackson in Congress, as the equally plain but also urbane Autobiography of Franklin is Benjamin Franklin. It is undiluted regionalism. It is provincial not only in subject but ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... to name the most remarkable all-around genius this country has produced, the answer would be Benjamin Franklin—whose life was perhaps the fullest, happiest and most useful ever lived in America. There are half a dozen chapters of this series in which he might rightfully find a place, and in which, indeed, it will be ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... as all visitors stated who wrote accounts at that day. Madam Knights visited New York in 1704, and wrote of the houses,—I will give her own words, in her own spelling and grammar, which were not very good, though she was the teacher of Benjamin Franklin, and the ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... were worked by hand, and were so slow that the most expert pressman using one of them could not have printed so much in three working days as a modern steam press can run off in five minutes. There was a general post, and Benjamin Franklin was deputy postmaster-general for the northern district of the colonies. But the letters were carried thirty miles a day by postriders on horseback, and there were never more than three mails a week between even the ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... to village. David Hume, the skeptic, explained Whitefield's charm by saying that the preacher spake to his audience with the same passionate abandon with which an ardent lover speaks to his sweetheart when he pleads for her hand. But Benjamin Franklin tells us that the charm in Whitefield's speech was not his musical voice, not his stream of thought running clear as crystal, not his sudden electric outbursts, when the great man seemed on fire; the something ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 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 true ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... 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
... could have 200 wagons and 1,500 pack horses at Fort Cumberland by early May. On April 21 Braddock reached Frederick, in Maryland. There he found that only 25 wagons had come in and several of these were unserviceable. Furiously the General swore that the expedition was at an end. At this point, Benjamin Franklin, who was in Frederick to placate the wrath of Braddock and St. Clair against the Pennsylvanians, commented on the advantages the expedition might have gained had it landed in Philadelphia instead Alexandria,[3] and ...
— Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755 • Don H. Berkebile
... Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest men in America, had told General Braddock that his greatest danger would be from unseen foes hidden among the underbrush ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... collecting a vast number of historical documents (which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up to London to enjoy the society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political clubs of litterateurs. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the happiness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Tait McKenzie With all his earthly possessions wrapped in a bandana, with upward gaze and confident gait, Benjamin Franklin goes ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... were baptized three male children (the uncommon gift of Providence at one birth) by the names of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... guardians. Never! But the fiendish tutors, chuckling in their glee, little knew what was passing through the cold, haughty intellect of Charles Fanuel Hall 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 school, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... showed so touched the sexton that, after inquiring as to the 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
... paper read on April 18, 1916, before the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, by Mr. P. Lee Phillips, of the Library of Congress, Banneker's Almanac was compared with Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. Mr. Phillips also referred to his efforts in behalf of peace and to the friendship that existed between Banneker and such distinguished men of his time as Washington and Jefferson. He closed his article on Banneker ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... theological writers with Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, 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 ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... shoulders above all others towered George Washington. The man most widely known, except Washington, was Benjamin Franklin, eighty-one years old; the youngest delegate was Mr. Dayton of New ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... 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 ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Benny," as they called him, while they assisted their mother in taking care of his clothes, in preparing his food, and in ministering to his other physical wants—yes, and to the wants of his mind, too. Who can say that Benjamin Franklin would ever have been what Benjamin Franklin was, without their aid, joined to the efforts of ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... carried truck to a market town; Spinoza, the philosopher of Amsterdam, ground lenses for his livelihood; Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was mechanic to the University of Glasgow; Porson, the great professor of Greek, was trained as a weaver; George Washington was a land surveyor; Benjamin Franklin ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... of 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
... was made between the two young men, although Serre seems to have been considered as the originator of the bold move. The intervention of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville was solicited, and a letter was obtained by him from Benjamin Franklin—then American minister at the Court of Versailles—to his son-in-law, Richard Bache. Lady Juliana Penn wrote in their behalf to John Penn at Philadelphia, and Mademoiselle Pictet to Colonel Kinloch, member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... of the 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 ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... was under the influence of a mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me, whom America has yet produced,—Benjamin Franklin,—I remember the relief with which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new version of the Book of Job,[421] to replace the old version, the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... tongue. This is saying a great deal, though it is not claiming for him the compactness, nor the robust vigor, nor the depth of thought, of many others masters in it. It is sometimes praised for its simplicity. It is certainly lucid, but its simplicity is not that of Benjamin Franklin's style; it is often ornate, not seldom somewhat diffuse, and always exceedingly melodious. It is noticeable for its metaphorical felicity. But it was not in the sympathetic nature of the author, to which I just referred, to come sharply ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Winthrop 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 ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Christians falls back in disapproving wonder and implicitly denies the saying. Christians! the farce is impudently broad. Let us stand up in the sight of heaven and confess. The ethics that we hold are those of Benjamin Franklin. Honesty is the best policy, is perhaps a hard saying; it is certainly one by which a wise man of these days will not too curiously direct his steps; but I think it shows a glimmer of meaning to even our most dimmed intelligences; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... miles); six weeks by sailing vessel from Southampton to Boston; and six months from England to India. People moved about but little. A journey of fifty miles was an event—for many something not experienced in a lifetime. To travel to a foreign land made a man a marked individual. Benjamin Franklin tells us that he was frequently pointed out on the streets of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, as a man who had been to Europe. George Ticknor has left us an interesting record (R. 339) of his difficulties, in ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Pennsylvania, lest they should fall into British hands and be melted up for cannon. At Christ Church a pew was regularly occupied by Washington during his frequent residence in Philadelphia; and here have been seated Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and many another patriot, besides Cornwallis, Howe, Andre and others on the English side. Around and beneath the church are many graves covered by weather-worn stones, and on the walls of the interior there are a number ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, when a printer boy in London, would drink no beer, and his companions called him the water American, and wondered that he was stronger than they who drank beer. His companion at the press drank six pints of beer every ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... should be commissioned to require bail of the said James Franklin for his good conduct during the ensuing year." The suggestion of the Committee 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 ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... scientific association in the United States is the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. It owed its origin to Benjamin Franklin, who in 1743 published "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America,'' which was so favourably received that in the same year the society was organized, with Thomas ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... made our nation borrowed most freely. Nowhere in Europe, except in England, can one find the origin of so much that is deepest and best in our national life—including the highest jewel of civilization, religious liberty—as in Holland, as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin long ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... four years of age, was a book-worm at five, and wrote numerous poems and dramas before he was ten. Lord Macaulay read at three and began a compendium of universal history at seven. Although not a lover of books, George Washington early read Matthew Hale and became a master in thought. Benjamin Franklin would sit up all night at his books. Thomas Jefferson read fifteen hour a day. Patrick Henry read for employment, and kept store for pastime. Daniel Webster was a devouring reader, and retained all that he read. At the age of fourteen he could repeat from memory ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... daughter of Governor Winthrop, and thus healed all the breaches that misunderstanding had made, was the father of eighteen children, and all through the old records are pictures of these exuberant Puritan families. Benjamin Franklin was one of seventeen. Sir William Phipps, the son of a poor gunsmith at Pemaquid, and one of the first and most notable instances of our rather tiresome "self-made men," was one of twenty-six, twenty-one being sons, while Roger Clapp ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... therein. Coming back to America he settled in the ministry at East Haddam, Conn. Some fifteen years later, in August, 1757, he died, while on a visit to Philadelphia, at the residence of his friend, Benjamin Franklin, then publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, who spoke of him, in an obituary notice in his paper, as "a gentleman of a humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, open and sincere ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... 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 ...
— 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
... question has often preoccupied Socialists, and they generally came to the conclusion that four or five hours a day would suffice, on condition, be it well understood, that all men work. At the end of last century, Benjamin Franklin fixed the limit at five hours; and if the need of comfort is greater now, the power of production has augmented ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... dissent and the "republican tendencies" of the age. Two colleges revealed a drift away from sectarianism. Brown, established in Rhode Island in 1764, and the Philadelphia Academy, forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania, organized by Benjamin Franklin, reflected the spirit of toleration by giving representation on the board of trustees to several religious sects. It was Franklin's idea that his college should prepare young men to serve in public office as leaders of the people and ornaments to ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... papers 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
... it 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 ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... harbor, and had forced on board a number of Russian sailors, sufficient to navigate her; that he had put on shore a part of the crew . . . among the rest, Ismyloff." In Paris he met and interested Benjamin Franklin. Hyacinth de Magellan, a descendant of the great discoverer, advanced Benyowsky money for the Madagascar filibustering expedition. So did certain merchants of Baltimore in 1785. On leaving England, Benyowsky ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... 1800, when the seat of government was moved to Washington, Philadelphia was the national capital. Here the first bank in the colonies, the Bank of North America, was opened in 1781, and here the first mint for the coinage of United States money was established in 1792. Here Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse made their great contributions to science, and here on September 19, 1796, Washington delivered his farewell address to the people of the United States. Here lived Robert Morris, who managed the finances of the Revolution, Stephen Girard of the War of 1812 and Jay Cooke ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... to Mr. Curtis to purchase The Saturday Evening Post, a Philadelphia weekly of honored prestige, founded by Benjamin Franklin. It was apparent at once that the company could not embark upon the development of two magazines at the same time, and as a larger field was seen for The Saturday Evening Post, it was decided to leave Country Life in abeyance ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Benjamin Franklin, five weeks before his death, said of Christ: "I think His system of morals, and His religion, as He left them, are the best the world ever saw or is likely to see." The services of the Bible in ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... of the great men I have met? They are disagreeable, conceited creatures; and ought, all of them, to have died before they were born; and for my part, I am satisfied not to have had the fate to marry one of them. As for Benjamin Franklin,' she continued, 'he was a particularly great man, and I am particularly grateful that I never saw him but once. I formed my opinion of him then; for I only need to see a person once, to form an opinion—and he is dead! Well, then, every one ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... compact with the evil one, (whence, probably, the familiar appellation of printers' devils,) it 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 it will or no—let us content ourselves with birds'-eye views of passing events, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Walker. This intimacy influenced greatly the future of Quitman. Walker was from Pennsylvania, and had married Miss Bache, the niece of George M. Dallas, sister to the great Professor Bache, and great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin. Mrs. Walker was a lady of great beauty, of rare accomplishments, and distinguished for her modesty and womanly bearing. Mr. Bache, the father of Mrs. Walker, emigrated to Texas, was in the Senate of her Congress at the time ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... 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 Chair books in the 18mo second ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of giving out. Then there's that remarkable, one may say that historical colored woman who knew Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of Bunk—no, it is the old negro man who fought at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that period. Really, now, it is quite curious to observe how that venerable female slave—formerly an African princess—is repeatedly dying ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... astonishing fact in our history. The wonder is that we 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 ignorance ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson ...
— The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America • Thomas Jefferson
... Benjamin Franklin Captain Kidd and the Early American Buccaneers Columbus and the Discovery of America Daniel Boone and the Early Settlement of Kentucky David Crockett and the Early Texas History De Soto, the Discoverer of the Mississippi George Washington and the ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... 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. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 to save ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the campaigns of Washington or the diplomatic triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was in Europe getting money from the French government and the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which occurred early in the revolution. The representatives of the different colonies had gathered in Philadelphia ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... fulfil express engagements dies away, the inclination of a government is not to invite trouble by looking around for difficult tasks to do. "Those who govern, having much business on their hands," says Benjamin Franklin, "do not like to take the trouble to consider and carry into execution new projects." This is a political law to which all governments conform. Even the great reforming administration of Gladstone which took ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... 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 ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... interest aroused by Mesmer's methods and the many seemingly marvellous cures resulting therefrom, that the Royal Society of Paris appointed a commission, which included Benjamin Franklin, to investigate the subject. The members of this commission reported that those patients who were not aware of the fact that they were being magnetized experienced no effects from the treatment. Those who were told that they were being magnetized experienced ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... friends were Hume, Garrick, Wilkes, Sterne, Gibbon, Horace Walpole, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Priestley, Lord Shelburne, Gen. Barr, Gen. Clark, Sir James MacDonald, Dr. Gem, Messrs. Stewart, Demster, Fordyce, Fitzmaurice, Foley, etc. Holbach addressed a letter to Hume in 1762, before making his acquaintance, in which he expressed ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was born in Milk Street, Boston, on January 6, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler who married twice, and of his seventeen children Benjamin was the youngest son. His schooling ended at ten, and at twelve he was bound apprentice to his brother ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... periodical was fixed when Edward Cave, in 1731, founded in London The Gentleman's Magazine. Ten years later, and at the very time that Samuel Johnson, at St. John's Gate, was preparing for "Sylvanus Urban, Esq.," the reports of the parliamentary debates, Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Bradford issued in Philadelphia the first ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... we doing, what was the rest of the world 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 ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... "For I was in Paris before the French Revolution, at the same time as our philosopher, Benjamin Franklin. I was present at court on a grand occasion. The king, Louis Sixteenth, a handsome and amiable monarch, and the beautiful and graceful queen, Marie Antoinette, were there of course; the young Dauphin was, I hope, sound asleep. ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... was of the sternly practical kind, resembling that of Benjamin Franklin. He did not promise his people, as did the Egyptians, felicity in a future life. He confined himself to prosperity in this world. And to succeed in his end he set an attainable standard. A standard no higher, certainly ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Yale College, and while yet of a tender age shining in the horizon of American literature; while the same age finds H. W. Longfellow writing for the Portland Gazette. At fourteen John Quincy Adams was private secretary to Francis H. Dana, American Minister to Russia; at fifteen Benjamin Franklin was writing for the New England Courant, and at an early age became a noted journalist. Benjamin West at sixteen had painted "The Death of Socrates," at seventeen George Bancroft had won a degree in history, Washington ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... different States met to adopt a constitution. There had been tentative efforts to effect an organization and adopt a Book of Common Prayer, all of which were overruled by the good providence of God. Many not of our fold desired a liturgy. Benjamin Franklin published at his own expense a revised copy of the English liturgy. The House of Bishops was composed of Bishop Seabury and Bishop White. Bishop Provost was absent. In the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... natural virtue was embodied in Benjamin Franklin,—in all this eighteenth century the best type and herald of the coming development of man. Franklin inherited the characteristic virtue of the Englishman and the Puritan; he started in ground which Puritan and Quaker had fertilized, and when the fire of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Boston's history that is not connected, in the popular imagination, with the Old South Meeting-House. It stands on the site of John Winthrop's garden; it is rich in memories of Cotton and Increase Mather. Within its ancient walls was Benjamin Franklin christened, and the building which stands to-day comes down to us from 1730, and was designed in obedient imitation of English masters. There, too, were enacted many scenes in the drama of revolution; there it was that the famous tea-party was proposed; and thence ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... been 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 was concluded, and that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Furnishing a superior and comprehensive record of this celebrated Statesman and Philosopher—rich beyond parallel in lessons of wisdom for every age, calling and condition in life, public and private. By O. L. HOLLEY. With Portrait on steel and ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... invasions of marauding parties of the revolutionary army, from facilities of approach on account of the freezing over of all the rivers from the extreme severity of this winter. It is singular that while Benjamin Franklin was leader of the Revolutionists, and now United States Minister to France, his son was one of the leaders of the Loyalists. "It was now," says Mr. Hildreth, "that the 'Board of Associated Loyalists' was formed, of which Franklin, late Royal Governor of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... War, politics became the absorbing topic of the day, and Benjamin Franklin was the first to achieve fame in this field of letters. His writings in "Poor Richard's Almanac," honest and wholesome in tone, exercised a marked influence upon the literature of his time. Among the orators ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... The first mention of French horns in America made by Benjamin Franklin, writing of the fine music in the church at Bethlehem, Pa., where flutes, oboes, French horns, and trumpets were accompanied by ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... Boycott, Dante 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, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... English Scriptures, or for offering Protestant prayers, was death. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin says that one of his ancestors, who lived in England in Mary's reign, adopted the following expedient for giving his family religious instruction. He fastened an open Bible with strips of tape on the under side of a stool. When he wished to read it aloud ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... and mottled, and all the features rugged and large. Heavy, corrugated furrows of decision and resolute will are plowed about the mouth, and the lips are shut like a vice. Otherwise, the face has a calm and benevolent look, not unlike that of Benjamin Franklin. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... bearing with him dispatches to the American commissioners, the news of Burgoyne's surrender, and instructions from the Marine Committee to the commissioners to invest him with a fine swift-sailing frigate. On his arrival at Nantes he immediately sent to the commissioners—Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee—a letter developing his general scheme of annoying the enemy. "It seems to be our most natural province," he wrote, "to surprise their defenseless places, and thereby divert their attention and draw ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... Pennsylvania, New York, Kentucky, the City of Washington and other places.[28] About half a century later it was only by persistent gatherings of public contributions that his very home was saved to the nation, so had his estate become divided and run down. After a long career, Benjamin Franklin acquired what was considered a large fortune. But it did not come from manufacture or invention, which he did so much to encourage, but from land. His estate in 1788, two years before his death, was estimated to be worth ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... 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 sagacious Franklin brought forward ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... 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 to be the first round of the ladder of fame, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... religion be true, some of the greatest, and grandest, and best who ever lived upon this earth, are suffering its torments tonight. It don't appear to make much difference, however, with this church. They go right on enjoying themselves as well as ever. If their doctrine is true, Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest, and best of men, who did so much to give us here a free government, is suffering the tyranny of God tonight, while he endeavored to establish freedom among men. If the churches were honest, their preachers ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll |
