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The voices / 325 fragments

Benjamin Franklin

1706 AD — 1790 AD

Printer, writer, experimenter and diplomat whose retrospective account of learning and habits sits beside concise practical maxims. Read the memoir and anthology selections as different kinds of writing.

Author and source reference ↗
▷ Play this voiceSearch within this voice ↗Place in time ↗faithlifelovetimewisdomlearningwealthpeace
Historical source references

Life and writing

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) began in printing and developed interests in experimentation and public affairs. His work included publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack and serving as a diplomat in France during the American Revolution. This range matters when reading a short attributed sentence: a practical maxim, a personal recollection and a public argument serve different purposes.

National Museum of American Diplomacy — Benjamin Franklin ↗ Biography: birth and death, printing, Poor Richard’s Almanack and diplomatic work in France

The linked Autobiography recounts learning and practical undertakings in a retrospective voice. In its continuation begun at Passy in 1784, Franklin describes a project of repeated self-examination, interruptions and difficulty with Order. Read the reported improvements alongside those limits. The selected anthology maxims below carry a Poor Richard’s Almanac reference; linking the memoir does not claim that these selections occur in it.

Project Gutenberg — Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, PG 148 ↗ PG148: continuation begun at Passy 1784; moral-perfection project, self-examination and Order; original reading guidance

Reading this voice

Begin with the memoir’s account of changing a habit and notice how experience complicates the proposed method. Compare a maxim’s compact advice with that longer account rather than expecting either to guarantee success. Bartlett supplies a Poor Richard’s Almanac reference for the selected sayings; that historical citation is not independent manuscript authentication, and the linked Autobiography is a separate reading edition. The archive’s approximate 1748 coordinate is a lifetime midpoint, not the composition date of those sayings.

Subjects to explore

Editorial reading connections, distinct from the archive’s word matching.

learninghabitsresilienceresponsibility

A work to read

Begin with these archive passages

Editorial starting points from this author’s existing entries.

Profile sources and editorial status

Original agent-assisted editorial profile, checked 2026-10-05. No human review is recorded. Life dates are recorded to the year; they do not date individual quotations.

Archive entries

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