Penny Wisdom

Proverbs from Poor Richard’s Alamanack:

• Those who have nothing to trouble them, will be troubled at nothing.
• Great modesty often hides great merit.
• The Muses love the Morning.
• Do me the favour to deny me at once.
• There’s none deceived but he that trusts.
• If evils come not, then our fears are vain; and if they do, fear but augments the pain.
• Full of courtesie, full of craft.
• The tongue is ever turning the aching tooth.
• Nothing dries sooner than a Tear.
• In the Affairs of this World Men are saved, not by Faith, but by the Want of it.
• An old young man will be a young old man.
• The prodigal generally does more injustice than the covetous.
• Singularity in the right, hath ruined many: happy those who are convinced of the general Opinion.
• Why does the blind man’s wife paint herself?

“The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others, than shewing a great deal yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with his own facetiousness and ingenuity, will the sooner come into it again. Most men had rather please than admire you and seek less to be instructed and diverted, than approved and applauded; and it is certainly the most delicate sort of pleasure, to please another. But that sort of wit, which employs itself insolently in criticizing and censuring the words and sentiments of others in conversation, is absolute folly; for it answers none of the needs of conversation. He who uses it neither improves others, is improved himself, or pleases any one.”