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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: in countenance by examples of other truly great men, of whom
patience is so often the characteristic. Your Quaker correspondent,
sir (for here again I will suppose the subject of my letter resembling
Dr. Franklin), praised your frugality, diligence and temperance,
which he considered as a pattern for all youth; but it is singular
that he should have forgotten your modesty and your disinterestedness,
without which you never could have waited for your advancement,
or found your situation in the mean time comfortable; which is
a strong lesson to show the poverty of glory and the importance
of regulating our minds. If this correspondent had known the nature
of your reputation as well as I do, he would have said, Your former
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
