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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
1,993
  • Better limp all the way to heaven than not get there at all. — Billy Sunday

    philosophy

  • Better to be pruned to grow than cut up to burn. — John Trapp

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  • Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship. — Benjamin Franklin

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  • Bulls and bears aren’t responsible for as many stock losses as bum steers. — Olin Miller

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  • Buy a used car with the same caution a naked man uses to climb a barbed-wire fence. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong. — Charles Wadsworth

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  • Carelessness does more harm than a want of knowledge. — Benjamin Franklin

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  • Chance favors only the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur

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  • Chances are very good that the person you’re listening to has nobody else in their life who listens to them the way you are doing. — Bob Burg

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  • Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it. — Harold S. Hubert

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  • Christ is not valued at all unless he be valued above all. — Augustine

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  • Common sense is very uncommon. — Horace Greeley

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  • Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof. — James Russell Lowell

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  • Debt is the worst poverty. — Magnus G. Lichtwer

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  • Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance. — Robert Quillen

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  • Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of. — Benjamin Franklin

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  • Do what you have to do because nobody will understand your motives anyway. — Dennis Hensley

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  • Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have, or sleep all you want. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Don’t confuse comfort with happiness. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Don’t confuse wealth with success. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched. — Aesop

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  • Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. — Robert Frost

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  • Don’t expect the best gifts to come wrapped in pretty paper. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Don’t let weeds grow around your dreams. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability. — John Wooden

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  • Don’t stop the parade to pick up a dime. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Don’t think expensive equipment will make up for lack of talent or practice. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Don’t think you can fill an emptiness in your heart with money. — H. Jackson Brown Jr

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  • Each morning puts a man on trial, and each evening passes judgment. — Roy L. Smith

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  • 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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