3 quotations linked to Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by or associated with Benjamin Franklin, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Character, habit, self-improvement, pride, humility, communication, work, civic life and Franklin’s deliberately imperfect virtue project.
Dates represented in this collection: 1791 · 1771–1790 composition. Individual quotation notes provide the most specific context for a passage.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“From a child I was fond of reading.”
Franklin identifies reading as an early habit that shaped his self-education, curiosity, writing, and later public life.
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; Franklin recalls spending his small amounts of money on books as a child.
“Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
Resolution becomes useful only when followed by execution; the maxim links deliberate standards with the habit of carrying them through.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Part II, thirteen-virtue table: Resolution. Project Gutenberg #148 (Charles W. Eliot / Harvard Classics, 1909) preserves the represented wording; the reviewed direct locator is Wikisource Section Thirty Six.
“In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.”
Franklin treats humility as a continuing discipline rather than a completed achievement: pride is difficult precisely because it can survive attempts to suppress it and can even attach itself to the appearance of modesty.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Part II, Humility discussion near the close of the Passy 1784 continuation. Franklin reflects that pride survives attempts to suppress it and can attach itself even to apparent humility; the reviewed direct locator is Wikisource Section Thirty Nine.
