The Financier Quotes

“Die Wirkung eines solchen Hauses auf seinen Besitzer ist unverkennbar. […] Es ist ein gegenseitiger Austausch von Würde, Bedeutung und Kraft, und jegliche Schönheit (oder deren Mangel) spinnt ständig wie ein hin und her sausendes Weberschiffchen von einem zum anderen geheime Fäden. Man schneide die Fäden durch, trenne den Menschen von dem, was von Rechts wegen sein Eigen und bezeichnend für ihn ist, und was zurück bleibt, ist ein seltsames Wesen, halb Erfolg und halb Versagen, wie die Spinne ohne Netz, das nie mehr sein wird, was es war, wenn ihm nicht alle seine Würden und Einkünfte zurück gegeben werden.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Damals war der Ruf des Detektivs William A. Pinkerton und seines Auskunftsbüros sehr bedeutend. Der Mann war durch eine Reihe von Wechselfällen aus Armut zu hohem Ansehen in seinem sonderbaren und für manche Leute widerwärtigen Beruf emporgestiegen, aber für alle, die solche an sich unglücklichen Dienste benötigen, war seine wohlbekannte und patriotische Rolle im Bürgerkrieg und um Abraham Lincolns Person eine Empfehlung. Er oder vielmehr seine Organisation hatte diesen während der ganzen Dauer seiner stürmischen Amtszeit im Regierungspalast geschützt. Seine Firma hatte Niederlassungen in Philadelphia, Washington und New York, um nur die bedeutendsten Orte zu nennen.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Die Liebe einer Mutter zu ihren Kindern ist beherrschend, löwinnenhaft, selbstsüchtig und zugleich selbstlos […]. Die Liebe eines Vaters zu seinem Sohn oder seiner Tochter ist, wenn es sich überhaupt um Liebe handelt, ein weitherziges, großzügiges, schwermütiges und nachdenkliches Schenken ohne Hoffnung auf Erwiderung, ein Abschiedsgruß an einen geplagten Wanderer, den er gern beschützen möchte, ein richtig abgewogenes Urteil über Stärke und Schwäche, voll Mitleid für den Misserfolg und voll Stolz auf Erfolg.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“I am as rich as I was, and only a little older.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Sure, anything can make or break a market from the failure of a bank to the rumor that your second cousin's grandmother has a cold.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Chapter I The Philadelphia into which Frank Algernon Cowperwood was born was a city of two hundred and fifty thousand and more. It was set with handsome parks, notable buildings, and crowded with historic memories. Many of the things that we and he knew later were not then in existence—the telegraph, telephone, express company, ocean steamer, city delivery of mails.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Never? That’s a hard word when it comes to whisky.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“The bankers got the free use of the money a part of the time, the brokers another part: the officials made money, and the brokers received a fat commission.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“He liked it, the idea of self-duplication. It was almost acquisitive, this thought.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“People,” he said, “don’t worry about people. People think what you want them to think.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“A real man—a financier—was never a tool. He used tools. He created. He led. Clearly,”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“In short, he was one of those early, daring manipulators who later were to seize upon other and even larger phases of American natural development for their own aggrandizement.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“president's brilliant theory of vending his wares direct to the people—was perhaps the only one who had suspicions. He had once written a brilliant criticism to some inquirer, in which he had said that no enterprise of such magnitude as the Northern Pacific had ever before been entirely dependent upon one house, or rather upon one man, and that he did not like it. "I am not sure that the lands through which the road runs are so unparalleled in climate, soil, timber, minerals, etc., as Mr. Cooke and his friends would have us believe. Neither do I think that the road”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Morality and immorality? He never considered them. But strength and weakness—oh, yes! If you had strength you could protect yourself always and be something. If you were weak—pass quickly to the rear and get out of the range of the guns. He was strong, and he knew it, and somehow he always believed in his star. Something—he could not say what—it”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Bergždžiausias pasaulyje dalykas - bandyti tiksliai apibūdinti žmogų. Kiekvienas individas yra priešingybių kamuolys, o juo žmogus gabesnis, juo daugiau jame prieštaravimų.”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Смелость, инициатива, предприимчивость – как много они значат,”
― Theodore Dreiser, Финансист: Трилогия желания, книга 1 (Теодор Драйзер)

“Cowperwood was shocked by the nudity of the Venus which conveyed an atmosphere of European freedom not common to America;”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“Strange ambition. Strange perversion, one might almost say. In”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier

“about those. They were bound up in metaphysical abstrusities about which he did not care to bother. Good and evil? Those were toys of clerics, by which they made money. And as for social favor or social ostracism which, on occasion, so quickly followed upon the heels of disaster of any kind, well, what was social ostracism?”
― Theodore Dreiser, The Financier