George Horace Lorimer - Letters from a self-made merchant to his son (1901)

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You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction.

George Horace Lorimer
Because a fellow has failed once or twice or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure till he's dead or loses his courage.

George Horace Lorimer
Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a shortcut to the second.

George Horace Lorimer
When an office begins to look like a family tree, you'll find worms tucked away snug and cheerful in most of the apples.

George Horace Lorimer
Doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days. Along toward the middle of the month a fellow begins to long for a broiled crow or a slice of cold dog.

George Horace Lorimer
Never threaten, because a threat is a promise to pay that it isn't always convenient to meet, but if you don't make it good it hurts your credit. Save a threat till you're ready to act, and then you won't need it.

George Horace Lorimer
It isn't what a man's got in the bank, but what he's got in his head, that makes him a great merchant.

George Horace Lorimer
Clothes don't make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that's a pretty considerable area of the human animal.

George Horace Lorimer
When a man makes a specialty of knowing how some other fellow ought to spend his money, he usually thinks in millions and works for hundreds.

George Horace Lorimer
Books are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live one's with them.

George Horace Lorimer
Procrastination is the longest word in the language, but there's only one letter between its ends when they occupy their proper places in the alphabet.

George Horace Lorimer
A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung.

George Horace Lorimer
Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there's nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us.

George Horace Lorimer
The great secret of good management is to be more alert to prevent a man's going wrong than eager to punish him for it.

George Horace Lorimer
I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.

George Horace Lorimer
You'll find that education's about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost.

George Horace Lorimer
A man's got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having.

George Horace Lorimer
There is one excuse for every mistake a man can make, but only one. When a fellow makes the same mistake twice he's got to throw up both hands and own up to carelessness or cussedness.

George Horace Lorimer
It's all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods.

George Horace Lorimer
Those who succeed can't forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can't forgive him for being a success.

George Horace Lorimer
After forty years of close acquaintance with it, I've found that work is kind to its friends and harsh to its enemies. It pays the fellow who dislikes it his exact wages, and they're generally pretty small; but it gives the man who shines up to it all the money he wants and throws in a heap of fun and satisfaction for good measure.

George Horace Lorimer
A business man's conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler rules than any other function of the human animal. They are: Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking.

George Horace Lorimer
Consider carefully before you say a hard word to a man, but never let a chance to say a good one go by. Praise judiciously bestowed is money invested.

George Horace Lorimer
When a fortune comes without calling, it's apt to leave without asking.

George Horace Lorimer
Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clear and straight and lays bare the fat and the lean; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.

George Horace Lorimer
What you know is a club for yourself, and what you don't know is a meat-ax for the other fellow.

George Horace Lorimer
Naturally, when a young fellow steps up into a big position, it breeds jealousy among those whom he's left behind and uneasiness among those to whom he's pulled himself up. Between them he's likely to be subjected to a lot of petty annoyances. But he's in the fix of a dog with fleas who's chasing a rabbit -- if he stops to snap at the tickling on his tail, he's going to lose his game dinner.

George Horace Lorimer
When a fellow's got what he set out for in this world, he should go off into the woods for a few weeks now and then to make sure that he's still a man, and not a plug-hat and a frock-coat and a wad of bills.

George Horace Lorimer
The easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.

George Horace Lorimer
The world is full of bright men who know all the right things to say and who say them in the wrong place.

George Horace Lorimer