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Benjamin Franklin was an American Founding Father, inventor, diplomat, writer, and arguably the most versatile genius the young republic produced. Printer by trade and polymath by nature, he helped draft both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, invented the lightning rod and bifocals, and somehow still found time to write some of the most quotable sentences in the English language.

Tax Day and Titanic Remembrance Day sharing a calendar square is either cosmic irony or perfect design. Franklin’s famous line — written in a letter in 1789, just months after the Constitution was ratified — has survived over two centuries because it captures something universally, inescapably true. Filing your taxes feels a little less painful when you’re in the company of the man who helped build the country that’s collecting them.