Benjamin Franklin — "Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards."
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
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More from Benjamin Franklin
"He that is used to go to bed hungry, and rise early, may be a good workman, but he is a bad master."
"Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn."
"Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout."
"For every pound of sand you eat, another shilling's yours to keep."
"There are in life real evils enough, and it is folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones; it is time enough when the real ones arrive."
About Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Polymath Founding Father, diplomat, and Poor Richard's Almanack author who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Closely associated with John Adams (fellow Founder, Massachusetts statesman) and Thomas Jefferson (fellow Declaration drafter). For an intellectual contrast, see Thomas Hutchinson, last royal governor of colonial Massachusetts — Franklin leaked Hutchinson's loyalist correspondence to Boston in 1772 to inflame revolutionary sentiment — Hutchinson represented the colonial-aristocrat crown-loyalty that Franklin's revolution was organized to dismantle.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Be fully observant and clear-eyed when choosing a spouse—scrutinize their character, habits, and values before committing. Once married, deliberately overlook minor faults rather than fixating on imperfections. It is pragmatic wisdom: choose carefully, then practice gracious tolerance. The saying acknowledges no person is without flaws, and lasting marital happiness depends partly on the conscious choice not to catalog every shortcoming your partner possesses.
Relevance to Benjamin Franklin
Franklin dispensed sharp, practical wisdom through Poor Richard's Almanack, and this quote fits that tradition perfectly. His own marriage to Deborah Read was pragmatic—a common-law union since her first husband's legal status was unclear. Franklin spent years abroad in England and France, leaving Deborah at home. He understood marriage as a partnership requiring both rational vetting and generous forbearance, mirroring his broader Enlightenment belief in deliberate reason balanced with realistic human tolerance.
The era
In 18th-century colonial America, marriage was a binding legal and economic contract with divorce nearly impossible and deeply stigmatizing. Choosing poorly meant financial hardship, social disgrace, or lifelong misery. The Enlightenment prized rational deliberation, making pre-marital scrutiny a moral duty. Yet sustained cohabitation demanded tolerance of inevitable flaws. Franklin's era had no romantic-love ideal as the primary basis for marriage—pragmatic compatibility and mutual utility mattered far more than passion.
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