Sublime

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

You will come off splendidly at those two exercises; but pass the pen over to Monsieur Abbe. That's his province."

The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's self as the proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise one's reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefor

Famous statesman Benjamin Franklin was a terrible writer when he was a teenager. He decided to do something about his problem. He took pieces of excellent writing and jotted down a word or two of the key idea of some of the sentences. Then he tried to re-create the sentences from his head, just using the key ideas as hints. By checking his sentence

Perhaps the most thoroughly brilliant and typical man of this decade is Mr. Bernard Shaw.

He was no worse than anybody, only smarter. Some get caught at it and some don’t—that’s the only difference. . . .

En 1727, il fonda un club social appelé Le Junto, ainsi décrit dans son autobiographie : « J’avais réuni la plupart de mes connaissances ingénieuses au sein d’un club d’amélioration mutuel que nous appelions Le Junto ; nous nous réunissions le vendredi soir. Les règles que j’avais rédigées imposaient à tous les membres, à tour de rôle, de présenter

Comme le disait Benjamin Franklin, « Tu me dis, j’oublie. Tu m’enseignes, je me souviens. Tu m’impliques, j’apprends. »