Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

by George Horace Lorimer

The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education.

Of course, some men are like pigs, the more you educate them, the more amusing little cusses they become,

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

I can’t hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good, and it would do the house harm.

I can give you a start, but after that you will have to dynamite your way to the front by yourself.

The boy who does anything just because the other fellows do it is apt to scratch a poor man’s back all his life.

you’ll find a way to pick them up later, after business hours.

But I wanted you to form good mental habits, just as I want you to have clean, straight physical ones.

I’ve learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised.

I don’t hire sporty clerks at all,

Some fellows leave the office at night and start out to whoop it up with the boys, and some go home to sit up with their troubles—they’re both in bad company.

What every man does need once a year is a change of work—

I want you to learn right at the outset not to play with the spoon before you take the medicine.

Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking.

in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods.

Say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk;

Poverty talks, too, but nobody wants to hear what it has to say.

You’ve got to handle the first year of your business life about the way you would a trotting horse.

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.

Your time is money—my money—and when you take half an hour of it for your own purposes, that is just a petty form of petty larceny.

Business is like oil—it won’t mix with anything but business.

house isn’t interested in knowing how you like your boss, but in how he likes you.

There isn’t any such thing as being your own boss in this world unless you’re a tramp, and then there’s the constable.

in about the same tone that you would use if you were asking your best girl to let you hold her hand.

He isn’t the brightest man in the office, but he is loyal to me and to the house, and when you have been in business as long as I have you will be inclined to put a pretty high value on loyalty.

he’s the breed of doctor that is always two weeks ahead of his patients’ condition when they’re poor, and two weeks behind it when they’re rich.

There’s nothing helps convince some men that a thing has merit like a little gold on the label.

the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.

The fun of the thing’s in the run and not in the finish.

To marry for money or to marry without money is a crime.

You can trust a woman’s taste on everything except men;

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.

Some salesmen think that selling is like eating—to satisfy an existing appetite; but a good salesman is like a good cook—he can create an appetite when the buyer isn’t hungry.

A clerk has just one boss to answer to—the manager. But the manager has just as many bosses as he has clerks under him.

A fellow who can’t take orders can’t give them.

There’s no alarm clock for the sleepy man like an early rising manager; and there’s nothing breeds work in an office like a busy boss.

Be slow to hire and quick to fire.

Keep close to your men.

Satisfaction is the oil of the business machine.

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.