Quotes from the 1700s

Shallow knowledge makes people overconfident; only deep study makes them humble and wise. Pope's advice is to learn deeply or not at all.

Everyone makes mistakes; forgiving them is what lifts us toward the divine. Pope wrote it to urge critics to be generous to struggling writers.

Franklin's advice to Philadelphians on preventing house fires. It is now used about health, but it began as fire safety and led to the city's first volunteer fire company.

An hour spent idle is not free. If you could have been earning during that time, the wages you gave up are a real cost, on top of whatever you spent.

Written by Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in a tax dispute with the colony's proprietors. It was a defense of the elected assembly's power to tax, not an argument against security measures.

Small, regular spending adds up. A habit that seems too minor to matter can drain your money as surely as a big mistake.

Steady, useful work protects us from three things that ruin lives: having nothing to do, falling into bad habits, and being poor.

Said, usually as a joke, when two people have the same idea at the same time. It flatters both of them.

A story about an unnamed “great princess” in Rousseau's memoirs, written when Marie Antoinette was about ten years old and living in Vienna. Revolutionary-era propaganda and later writers attached it to her.

Henry's call for Virginia to arm itself against Britain, weeks before the fighting began at Lexington and Concord. The famous words were written down only 42 years later, from listeners' memories.

The last words reported of a 21-year-old American spy hanged by the British. They were written down years later, and they echo a line from a popular play of the time.

The founding claim of the United States, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. Its authors applied it narrowly, but later generations used its own words to demand freedom and equal rights.

Burns, having wrecked a mouse's nest with his plough, tells her that the best plans of mice and men often go wrong, and that he is worse off than her because he worries about the past and the future.

The song asks whether old friends should be forgotten, and answers no. “Auld lang syne” means roughly “old long since,” or “the good old days,” and the singers drink a cup of kindness to them.

A wry aside in a letter about the new U.S. Constitution. Franklin made it famous, but the joke was already in print more than seventy years earlier.

Washington, at the request of Congress, set aside a day for Americans to thank God for the country's blessings, above all the chance to set up a new government peacefully.

An old joke about a cold summer, retold about many cities. Twain's papers contain nothing like it about San Francisco, though he did once retell an older version about Paris.

The best part of a good person's life is not their big achievements but the small, everyday kindnesses that nobody records and they themselves forget.