The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can ...write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My criticisms are always simple; they are limited to one word:MOmit! Every syllable that can be struck out is pure profit, and eve...ry page that can be economised is a five-per-cent dividend. Nature rebels against this rule; the flesh is weak, and shrinks from the scissors; I groan in retrospect over the weak words and useless pages I have written; but the law is sound, and every book written without a superfluous page or word is a masterpiece. All the same, no one cares to apply so stern a law to another person. One has right to be severe only with oneself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In matter of commerce the fault of the Dutch Is offering too little and asking too much.... The French are with equal advantage content, So we clap on Dutch bottoms just twenty per cent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I... tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meetinghouses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;Mthough I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do not tell me ... of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthro...pist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who ma...kes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune ... in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this.... He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent--for every effect a perfect cause--and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republic...an institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »