The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinCosimo, Inc., 2007 M04 1 - 150 páginas American icon BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790), born in Massachusetts to a British immigrant father and colonial mother, published the famous Poor Richards' Almanack, helped found the University of Pennsylvania, and was the first Postmaster General of the United States. His likeness adorns, among other things, the United States' hundred-dollar bill. Benjamin Franklin was as wildly intriguing a personality as his legend suggest, and as you've always heard, as his autobiography makes plain. From his hoarding of his pay as a teenager to buy books to his askance asides at such habits as the drinking of beer, from his work as a printer to his experiments with electricity, and much more, this is the story of Franklin's life-told as only he could tell it-in the years before the American Revolution. A classic of autobiography, this is must reading for American-history buffs, and for anyone fascinated by larger-than-life personalities. |
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Página 11 - I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected...
Página 82 - It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.
Página 75 - I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books. I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as...
Página 66 - I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day.
Página 62 - Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men...
Página 12 - By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.
Página 75 - I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.
Página 67 - I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues successively. Thus, in the first week, my great guard was to avoid every the least offense against Temperance, leaving the other virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every evening the faults of the day. Thus, if in the first week I could keep my first line, marked T...
Página 65 - ... 4. RESOLUTION Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. FRUGALITY Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; ie, waste nothing.
Página 19 - Second-street, and ask'd for bisket, intending such as we had in Boston ; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was...