• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 6 20 1917
• Tags:
• advice

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

The question isoften asked, How did Franklin make himself so effective a man? How did he succeed, where others failed? The secret of it lies in his practical philosophy of life.

It is well that he bequeathed that secret to us in the maxims which he composed for his own guidance during his voyage back to America from England, when he was twenty-two years of age. The snappy phrases are as full of vitality today as when first written. They are as follows:

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Speak naught but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly.

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Drive thy business; let not thy business drive thee.

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

He that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

They that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.

A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last.

World wise, these maxims; but sound rules of conduct. Franklin was no doddering Polonius, looking for advantage where others could have none.

He was worldly-wise, but he employed his worldly wisdom to serve not enly himself but his friends, his neighbors, and finally his country. With it all he was humble.