“It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.” “Let thy maid-servant be faithful, strong and homely.” “Necessity never made a good bargain.” “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage; half shut afterwards.”—And so on.
Many of these sentiments, of course, were not entirely new with Poor Richard. “Not a tenth part of the wisdom,” says Franklin himself, “was my own, but rather the gleanings that I had made of the sense of all ages and nations.” But what was his own was the selection and the quaint, pregnant form which gave that wisdom currency. Of many sayings now in everybody's mouth it is scarcely remembered that Franklin was their author, such as “Time is money,” “Knowledge is power,” and that well-known definition: “Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is your doxy,” of which John Adams said that it was the brightest epigram he had ever heard.
It has frequently been said of most of Poor Richard's proverbial philosophy that it does not address itself to the highest instincts and aspirations of human nature. This is true. The same may be said of the Franklinian maxim “Honesty is the best policy.” It implies that honesty is only one of several different policies, but that of these it is the safest and the best. This maxim does indeed not rise to the loftier plane of the sentiment that right is right, and must be maintained as right, no matter whether it appear as the best policy or not. But Franklin recognized the fact that while this sentiment is professed by many, it is the controlling motive only with few. And he easily concluded that, while right, indeed, should be maintained for its own sake, it would help the cause of right and honesty amazingly, with the common run of mankind, if honesty were at the same time recognized as the best policy and the safest investment. In fact, he
