Letter to Washington, March 5, 1780.
Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Letter to M. Leroy, 1789.
Footnotes
[359:4] Eripuit cœlo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis (He snatched the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants),—a line attributed to Turgot, and inscribed on Houdon's bust of Franklin. Frederick von der Trenck asserted on his trial, 1794, that he was the author of this line.
[359:5] This sentence was much used in the Revolutionary period. It occurs even so early as November, 1755, in an answer by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to the Governor, and forms the motto of Franklin's "Historical Review," 1759, appearing also in the body of the work.—Frothingham: Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 413.
[360:1] See Herbert, page [206].
[360:2] Clarke: Paræmiolgia, 1639.
My hour is eight o'clock, though it is an infallible rule, "Sanat, sanctificat, et ditat, surgere mane" (That he may be healthy, happy, and wise, let him rise early).—A Health to the Gentle Profession of Serving-men, 1598 (reprinted in Roxburghe Library), p. 121.