Well done is better than well said.

This saying comes from Poor Richard’s Almanack, the yearly almanac that Benjamin Franklin printed in Philadelphia under the name of “Richard Saunders”, a fictional and penniless astrologer. Besides the calendar, the phases of the moon and the weather, each issue carried short proverbs. In his Autobiography, Franklin explained that he filled the little spaces between the calendar’s notable days with sentences that encouraged industry and frugality.

The Wikisource page gathers the sayings in alphabetical order, and this one has fitting neighbours: “Well done is twice done” and “What you would seem to be, be really.” All prefer deeds to words, a favourite theme of Franklin, the printer who rose to become a scientist and statesman.

Franklin wrote the almanac for a quarter of a century, from 1732, and never claimed that every saying was his own: many reworked older proverbs. In 1758 he gathered the best of them into a speech by “Father Abraham”, later known as The Way to Wealth, which was reprinted and translated many times.

Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1737

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