“The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.”
“He is not well-bred, that cannot bear ill-breeding in others.”
“You may talk to much on the best of subjects.”
And some advice for any number of politicians (especially Joe Biden) in this description from Edmund Morgan’s wonderful Benjamin Franklin:
At any rate, in an age of great public rhetoric, he never made a memorable public speech—not in any political campaign, not in the Philadelphia Common Council, not in the Pennsylvania Assembly, not in the Continental Congress, not in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was always Poor Richard, never saying too much in any company, especially very large company. His specialty was listening and then making the right suggestions to the right people at the right time.
Also from Morgan: “Franklin never offended people except intentionally.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff has an interesting piece on Franklin on today’s New York Times op-ed page.