The autobiography of benjamin franklin sparknotes

page 38

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous was not sufficient to prevent our slipping, and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I met in my reading, I

B E N J A M I N

Project Gutenberg's Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Author: Benjamin Franklin Editor: Frank Woodworth Pine Illustrator: E. Boyd Smith Release Date: December 28, 2006 [EBook #20203] [Last updated: October 19, 2022] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN *** Produced by Turgut Dincer, Brian Sogard and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

FRANKLIN ARMS

FRANKLIN SEAL

"He was therefore, feasted and invited to all the court parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who, being a chess player of about his force, they very generally played together. Happening once to put her king in

Part Two

{1}At the time I established myself in Pennsylvania there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston.

{2}In New York and Philadelphia the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only paper, etc., almanacs, ballads, and a few common school-books. Those who loved reading were obliged to send for their books from England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had left the ale-house, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in. I proposed that we should all of us bring our books to that room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he wished to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented us.

{3} Finding the advantage of this little collection, I proposed to render the benefit from books more common by commencing a public subscription library. . . . So few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry to find mor

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