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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: while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every
other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental,
even to our avarice and ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake
of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex'd
to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under
thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr'd to me
as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept,
which fully express'd the extent I gave to its meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself;
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
