Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

Written 1706-1790; this is considered the first autobiography (a la Albrecht Dürer's self-portrait?)

• Says the Pope, judiciously: "Men should be taught as if you taught them not. And things unknown propos'd as things forgot."
• Ben Franklin became a vegetarian because of that guy's book Way to Health(?), until he realized that animals eat other animals - he saw a fish get cut open once, and other fish were in its stomach.
• (Talking shit) It was a habit he had acquired. He wanted to please everybody, and having little to give, he gave expectations. 
• "Taking a Saint Monday" is when you're hung over from Sunday night, and call out of work.
• He mentions how when they wanted to increase circulation of paper money, rich people didn't like the idea, but they had nobody to write about it. Ben Franklin could write, and had his own press, so he wrote in favor, and it happened. Imagine a day when simply knowing how to write made you that valuable. But also imagine a time when it was so rare that even "the rich" couldn't find one. 
• I think "shut up" originally meant shut up in the house, not to shut your mouth.
• He seems to think that reading, in itself, makes you a better person. Granted, it was very new at the time, and so yes it may have given you a huge advantage, like having a PhD today.
• Imagine the nerve - "In the conduct of my newspaper I carefully excluded libeling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stagecoach in which any one who would pay had a right to a place, my answer was, that I would print the piece separately if desired, and the author might have as many copies as he pleased to distribute to himself, but that I would not take upon me to spread his detraction, and that having contracted with my subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining, I could not fill their papers with private altercation in which they had no concern without doing them manifest injustice. ... These things I mention as a caution to young printers, and that they may be encouraged not to pollute their presses and disgrace their profession by such infamous practices, but refuse steadily .... In the Pennsylvania Gazette for June 10, 1731, Franklin wrote of having displeased many men "for refusing absolutely to print any of their party or personal reflections". On December 24, 1782, he wrote Francis Hopkinson: "If people will print heir abuses of one another, let them do it in little pamphlets, and distribute them where they think proper.
• He tells a story of a guy he doesn't like, but who he has no choice but to cooperate with, and who is above him in station, and who would likely be for a long time: "I did not however aim at gaining his favor by paying any servile respect to him, but after some time took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favor of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately; and I returned it in about a week, with another note expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next met in the House he spoke to me, (which he had never done before) and with great civility. And he ever afterwards manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. Tis is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged. And it shows how much more profitable it is prudently to remove, than to resent, return and continue inimical proceedings. [inimical: adverse, hurtful, enemy]
• Ben Franklin on vaccines (in the *** 1700's) - In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of 4 years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had no given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents, who omit that operation on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen. 
• Note, also from the 1700's, most of the profits of his paper came from advertisements.

Image credit: Benjamin Franklin - Joseph-Siffred Duplessis - 1785