Skip to content
Frank Ball writing in his study

The quote library

Frankisms

Short truths, collected over a lifetime of writing and teaching. Read a few, or lose an afternoon.

Collected
413
  • Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. — Benjamin Franklin

    philosophy

  • Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. — Thomas Moore

    philosophy

  • Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. — Robert Brault

    philosophy

  • Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. — Will Rogers

    philosophy

  • Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven. — Henry Ward Beecher

    philosophy

  • Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question. — Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), Collected Papers, V, 211

    philosophy

  • Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him. — Billy Graham

    philosophy

  • Everyone at every minute of his life must feel something. Only the dead have no sensations. — Constantin Stanislavski

    philosophy

  • Everyone hears but what he understands. — Goethe

    philosophy

  • Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. — John Wooden

    philosophy

  • Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves. — Daniel Webster

    philosophy

  • Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak. — John Selden, 1584–1654

    philosophy

  • First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Proverbs in Prose

    philosophy

  • For a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner. — Samuel Johnson

    philosophy

  • For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong. — H. L. Mencken

    philosophy

  • For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost; being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for want of care about a horseshoe nail. — Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

    philosophy

  • Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. — Mahatma Gandhi

    philosophy

  • Getting angry can sometimes be like leaping into a wonderfully responsive sports car, gunning the motor, taking off at high speed and then discovering the brakes are out of order. — Maggie Scarf

    philosophy

  • God commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else. — Martin Luther

    philosophy

  • God gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest. — Josiah Gilbert Holland

    philosophy

  • God governs the world, and we have only to do our duty wisely, and leave the issue to him. — John Jay

    philosophy

  • God has given us two hands—one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding. We are channels made for sharing. — Billy Graham

    philosophy

  • God heals, and the doctor takes the fees. — Benjamin Franklin

    philosophy

  • God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh. — Voltaire

    philosophy

  • God must have loved the plain people: He made so many of them. — Abraham Lincoln

    philosophy

  • Good fortune, like ripe fruit, ought to be enjoyed while it is present. — Epictetus

    philosophy

  • Grace can’t be found outside the truth of suffering. Name your blindness and give it light. — Natalie Goldberg

    philosophy

  • Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity. — St. Augustine

    philosophy

  • He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. — Goethe

    philosophy

  • He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature. — Socrates

    philosophy

  • He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. — Benjamin Franklin

    philosophy

  • He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. — Benjamin Franklin

    philosophy

  • He who cannot forgive others destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass. — George Herbert

    philosophy

  • He who decides a case without hearing the other side, though he decide justly, cannot be considered just. — Seneca

    philosophy

  • He who does not need to lie is proud of not being a liar. — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844–1900

    philosophy

  • He who lives to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies. — Tertullian

    philosophy

  • He who will not economize will have to agonize. — Confucius

    philosophy

  • Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. — D.L. Moody

    philosophy

  • Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of water. — Rivarol

    philosophy

  • Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less. — Thomas Umstattd

    philosophy