Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request. One... must seem to hear the unreasonable demands of the petulant, unmoved, and the tedious details of the dull, untired. That is the least price that a man must pay for a high station.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the... suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At no time in history ... have the people who are not fit for society had such a glorious opportunity to pretend that society is n...ot fit for them. Knowledge of the slums is at present a passport to society--so much the parlor philanthropists have achieved--and all they have to do is to prove that they know their subject. It is an odd qualification to have pitched on; but gentlemen and ladies are always credulous, especially if you tell them that they are not doing their duty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There were some schools, so called [in my youth]; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond "readin, writin, and... cipherin," to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Edith: Does anybody want me to flatter and be untruthful? Hotchkiss: Well, since you ask me, I do. Surely it's the very first qual...ification for tolerable social intercourse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spel...ling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and hap...py.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »