Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son (Illustrated)

by George Horace Lorimer

it isn’t so much knowing a whole lot, as knowing a little and how to use it that counts.

The sooner you adjust your spending to what your earning capacity will be, the easier they will find it to live together.

Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.

Remember that when you’re in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you’re in the wrong you can’t afford to lose it.

I want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.

A real salesman is one-part talk and nine-parts judgment; and he uses the nine-parts of judgment to tell when to use the one-part of talk.

Poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does. It’s easy to stand hard times, because that’s the only thing you can do, but in good times the fool-killer has to do night work.

Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you; of making inferiority feel like equality. A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung.

man can’t do what he pleases in this world, because the higher he climbs the plainer people can see him.

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.

Never learn anything about your men except from themselves. A good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow who can’t read human nature can’t manage it.

I simply mention Lem in passing as an example of the fact that when you’re through sizing up the other fellow, it’s a good thing to step back from yourself and see how you look. Then add fifty per cent. to your estimate of your neighbor for virtues that you can’t see, and deduct fifty per cent. from yourself for faults that you’ve missed in your inventory, and you’ll have a pretty accurate result.

A man’s as good as he makes himself, but no man’s any good because his grandfather was.

A man who does big things is too busy to talk about them.

I learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud.