Benjamin Franklin — Energy and Persistence

Benjamin Franklin left more maxims than any other American — twenty-five years of Poor Richard's Almanack, then an Autobiography read by every generation since. This line is not among them. "Energy and persistence conquer all things" is credited to him in quotation books but has not been found in anything he wrote.

It still describes him. He walked into Philadelphia in 1723 at seventeen with a Dutch dollar and a shilling in copper, became the leading printer in the colonies, retired at forty-two, and then took up electricity, diplomacy, and revolution. He spent nearly nine years in France securing the loans and the fleet that won the war.

He was eighty-one when he signed the Constitution. He was carried to the sessions in a sedan chair.

Franklin is unmistakable even as a flat shape: the receding hairline, the shoulder-length hair, the double chin, the plain coat. The silhouette is a warm coral red and fills most of the sheet, running off the bottom edge. Across it the maxim is set in a high-contrast navy serif with hairline strokes, four lines, "things." alone at the end. The italic attribution sits low and small. There is no border; the paper is the frame.