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Card #c1041IR // #c1041Synthesis

"I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I drest plainly; I was seen at no places of idle diversion." "to show that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I purchas'd at the stores thro' the streets on a wheelbarrow."

— In our words · Source: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin)

[Use when]

Your work is solid but the people who decide on credit or business never see it.

[Why it matters]

A new printer with debts needed credit. He managed the visible signs of industry as carefully as the work itself. By his account the stationery merchants then "solicited my custom."

More from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

#c1038"I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking…You want to learn a craft from a master's work and reading it again isn't teaching you anything. #c1039"I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter."…Your questions keep winning arguments and people have started refusing to answer them. #c1040"I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own." "in answering I…You are right on the substance and still losing the room.