Diligence is the mother of good luck.

The line belongs to The Way to Wealth, in which old Father Abraham harangues the crowd at an auction with the sayings of Poor Richard. He has just insisted that “there are no gains without pains” and that at the working man’s house “hunger looks in, but dares not enter”. Then he turns to those who envy the fortunate: “What though you have found no treasure, nor has any rich relation left you a legacy”, diligence is the mother of good luck, “and God gives all things to industry.” So “plough deep, while sluggards sleep”.

Franklin wrote the speech as the preface to his almanac for 1758, the last of the Poor Richard series begun in 1732, gathering the best maxims of twenty-five years. It was reprinted endlessly, often as a cheap tract; a Scottish chapbook of 1828 prints this line on its title page.

The saying had first appeared in the almanac itself in the 1730s. Its point is not that luck does not exist, but that it usually calls on those already at work.

The Way to Wealth, Father Abraham’s speech, 1758

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work