Poor Richard's Almanack
Franklin's annual almanac (1732–1758), a major source of English-language proverbs.
Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard's Almanack under the pen name Richard Saunders, filling the calendar's blank spaces with weather notes, jokes, and short sayings. The sayings made it famous and made him quotable for three centuries.
Franklin was mostly an editor rather than an inventor. He drew heavily on existing English and continental proverb collections and sharpened what he found — cutting words, tightening rhythm, sometimes reversing the sense. 'Early to bed and early to rise' has clear precursors in earlier English collections.
The 1758 preface, later reprinted as 'The Way to Wealth', gathered the best of the sayings into a single speech by 'Father Abraham', which is why so many of them travel together and why that essay became one of the most reprinted texts of the eighteenth century.
Common mistake: crediting Franklin as the originator of every maxim in the Almanack. Cite him as the phrasing's author where his wording is distinct, and note the proverb's earlier life where one exists.
“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
Keep reading the glossary
A traditional saying that expresses a generally accepted truth — almost always anonymous.
An old, well-known saying that has acquired authority through long use.
A personal notebook of quotations, ideas, and passages — a tradition stretching from antiquity to today.
Erasmus's monumental 1500 collection of Greek and Latin proverbs — the book that put classical sayings back into European speech.