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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”

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

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

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

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

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  • “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”

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

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

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  • “Everyone hears but what he understands. — Goethe”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • “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”

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

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  • “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”

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

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

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

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  • “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”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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