Lost time is never found again.

The saying comes from Poor Richard’s Almanack, which Benjamin Franklin printed each year in Philadelphia under the name of Richard Saunders. In Wikisource’s alphabetical list of the almanac’s sayings, it sits between “Look before, or you’ll find yourself behind” and “Love, and be loved.” Time is a favourite theme of the almanac: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

In his last almanac, for 1758, Franklin gathered dozens of these sayings into a speech by an old man, Father Abraham, who addresses a crowd waiting for an auction to begin. The line reappears there, followed by a sequel: “and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.” The crowd approves the sermon, then, as soon as the sale opens, begins to buy extravagantly. Published separately as The Way to Wealth, the text was reprinted and translated many times.

Poor Richard's Almanack

Checked word for word in the work itself.

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