Status Updates From Benjamin Franklin's Book of...

“What reverses may attend the remainder is in the hand of Providence; but, if they arrive, the reflection on past happiness enjoy’d ought to help his bearing them with more resignation.”

“In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and now I am grown old, and my memory had, I feel very sensibly the want of it. But, on the whole, tho’ I never arrived at perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should been if I had not attempted it;”

O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus.

translation (non-literal):
O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher of virtues and expeller of vices! Just a single day lived well and according to your lessons is to be preferred to an eternity of errors.

— Cicero

“their hand is mended by the endeavor”