List of 13 Virtues by Benjamin Franklin

1. TEMPERANCE

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY

Lose no time; be always employed in something useful— cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. SINCERITY

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE

Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. MODERATION

Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

11. TRANQUILITY

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY

Rarely use venery* but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation

[* sex

13. HUMILITY

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

A Young Puritan’s Code by Jonathan Edwards

Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.

REMEMBER TO READ OVER THESE RESOLUTIONS ONCE A WEEK.

1. Resolved, never to do, be or suffer anything in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God.

2. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.

3. Resolved, to live with all my might while I do live.

4. Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

5. Resolved, to think much, on all occasions, of my own dying and of the common circumstances which attend death.

6. Resolved, to be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality.

7. Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.

8. Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger to irrational beings.

9. Resolved, never to speak evil of any person except some particular good call for it.

10. Resolved, to maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.

11. Resolved, never to do anything which if I should see in another, I should count a just occasion to despise him for or to think any way the more meanly of him.

12. Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently as that I may find and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

13. Resolved, never to speak anything that is ridiculous or matter of laughter on the Lord’s day.

14. Whenever I hear anything spoken in conversation of any person, if I think it would be praiseworthy in me, resolved to endeavor to imitate it.

15. Resolved, after afflictions, to inquire what I am the better for them; what good I have got, and what I might have got by them.