Phraseology and Culture in English

3. Benjamin Franklin’s proverbial construction of the American 
worldview
The early English-speaking settlers who colonized the original thirteen 
states brought much traditional proverbial wisdom with them, making use 
of the social norms expressed in them in their writings, in church sermons, 
in school books, in child rearing, in political discourse, and in economic 
intercourse. Such early popular books as Old Mr. Dod’s Sayings (1673) or 
the sermons of the clergyman Cotton Mather (1663–1728) and his fellow 
preachers made ample use of Biblical and folk proverbs to spread so-called 
protestant ethics among their compatriots, encouraging them to lead moral 
and religious lives coupled with a healthy attitude towards solid work 
(Hayes 1997; Whiting 1972). But there was nobody more influential in 
exhorting his fellow citizens to adhere to the principles of protestant work 
ethics than the printer, publisher, inventor, scientist, businessman, and dip-
lomat Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), who for twenty-five years, from 

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Wolfgang Mieder 
1733 to 1758, published his successful Poor Richard’s Almanack for his 
fellow colonists. He sold about 10,000 copies each year, filling the small 
booklets of 24 to 36 pages with weather and planting information as well as 
various short instructional and entertaining tidbits. Next to the Bible, these 
almanacs were perhaps the most widely read materials in the colonies. In 
fact, while preachers were quoting Bible passages, the citizens of the day 
enjoyed citing the wisdom of the almanacs which to a large degree was 
expressed in common proverbs (Mieder 1989a: 129–142). And the prov-
erbs were also picked up in other almanacs throughout the colonies, they 
were used on plates and mugs, and they were stitched enumerable times on 
samplers serving as wall decorations (Tolman 1962; Riley 1991; Robacker 
1974) – a tradition that can still be observed in New England in particular 
to the present day. 
Franklin was well aware of the success of his best-seller almanacs, and 
he also knew, of course, that most of the proverbs listed in them he had in 
fact taken from such well-known British proverb collections as George Her-
bert’s Outlandish Proverbs (1640), James Howell’s Paroimiografia (1659), 
and Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia (1732) (see Newcomb 1957). Altogether 
Franklin included 1,044 proverbs (about 40 each year) in his almanacs (see 
Barbour 1974), of which he chose 105 to be part of his celebrated essay The
Way to Wealth (1758). As Stuart A. Gallacher has shown, only the following 
five proverbs in this essay were actually coined by Franklin: Three removes 
is (are) as bad as a fire; Laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon over-
takes him; Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; Industry
pays debts, while despair increases them, and There will be sleeping enough 
in the grave (Gallacher 1949). But while these texts actually took on a pro-
verbial status during Franklin’s time and beyond, they are not particularly 
current any longer, except perhaps for Three removes is as bad as a fire
and There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
In any case, Franklin’s essay on The Way to Wealth was a “hit” among 
his compatriots, instructing them and later generations about virtue, pros-
perity, prudence, and above all economic common sense. The essay con-
tained the so-called Puritan ethics expressed in proverbs that helped to shape 
the worldview of the young American nation, a view of the world that is 
prevalent still and especially so in the New England region. The masterful 
treatise thus became a secular Bible of sorts, spreading social wisdom in the 
form of folk wisdom to thousands of eager followers. There is no doubt 
then that The Way to Wealth is one of the truly significant documents in the 
history of proverbs as cultural signs, even if, as Franklin admitted already 

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