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Salon
Salon
Lifestyle
Hanh Nguyen

Ken Burns on the flawed Ben Franklin

Benjamin Franklin portrait by Joseph Siffred Duplessis The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."

Benjamin Franklin's oft-paraphrased quote, which pops up in the second season of Neflix's drama "Virgin River," is employed by a small-town mayor who begrudgingly takes in someone she dislikes. It's a favorite quote of reluctant hosts, for obvious reasons but also a testament to the enduring wit of Franklin more than 250 years later.

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