business

1.

Frankly, I don't want to see a rapid upturn.I want it to hold until some of these idiotic competitors go bust.

- Bamford, Joe

2.

Business is a combination of war and sport.

- Maurois, Andre

3.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.

- Walt Whitman

4.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

- Ford, Henry

5.

The chief business of the American people is business.

- Calvin Coolidge

6.

There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.

- Jacobs, Randall

7.

Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.

- Blake, William

8.

BARRACK, n. A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.

- Ambrose Bierce

9.

DEPUTY, n. A male relative of an office-holder, or of his bondsman. The deputy is commonly a beautiful young man, with a red necktie and an intricate system of cobwebs extending from his nose to his desk. When accidentally struck by the janitor's broom, he gives off a cloud of dust. "Chief Deputy," the Master cried, "To-day the books are to be tried By experts and accountants who Have been commissioned to go through Our office here, to see if we Have stolen injudiciously. Please have the proper entries made, The proper balances displayed, Conforming to the whole amount Of cash on hand -- which they will count. I've long admired your punctual way -- Here at the break and close of day, Confronting in your chair the crowd Of business men, whose voices loud And gestures violent you quell By some mysterious, calm spell -- Some magic lurking in your look That brings the noisiest to book And spreads a holy and profound Tranquillity o'er all around. So orderly all's done that they Who came to draw remain to pay. But now the time demands, at last, That you employ your genius vast In energies more active. Rise And shake the lightnings from your eyes; Inspire your underlings, and fling Your spirit into everything!" The Master's hand here dealt a whack Upon the Deputy's bent back, When straightway to the floor there fell A shrunken globe, a rattling shell A blackened, withered, eyeless head! The man had been a twelvemonth dead. Jamrach Holobom

- Ambrose Bierce

10.

The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every client is an opportunity. Every sermon is an opportunity. Every business transaction is an opportunity -- an opportunity to be polite -- an opportunity to be manly -- an opportunity to be honest -- an opportunity to make friends.

- Marden, Orison Swett

11.

KING'S EVIL, n. A malady that was formerly cured by the touch of the sovereign, but has now to be treated by the physicians. Thus'the most pious Edward" of England used to lay his royal hand upon the ailing subjects and make them whole -- a crowd of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great essay of art; but at his touch, Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand, They presently amend, as the "Doctor" in _Macbeth_ hath it. This useful property of the royal hand could, it appears, be transmitted along with other crown properties; for according to "Malcolm," 'tis spoken To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. But the gift somewhere dropped out of the line of succession: the later sovereigns of England have not been tactual healers, and the disease once honored with the name "king's evil" now bears the humbler one of "scrofula," from _scrofa_, a sow. The date and author of the following epigram are known only to the author of this dictionary, but it is old enough to show that the jest about Scotland's national disorder is not a thing of yesterday. Ye Kynge his evill in me laye, Wh. he of Scottlande charmed awaye. He layde his hand on mine and sayd: "Be gone!" Ye ill no longer stayd. But O ye wofull plyght in wh. I'm now y-pight: I have ye itche! The superstition that maladies can be cured by royal taction is dead, but like many a departed conviction it has left a monument of custom to keep its memory green. The practice of forming a line and shaking the President's hand had no other origin, and when that great dignitary bestows his healing salutation on strangely visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he and his patients are handing along an extinguished torch which once was kindled at the altar-fire of a faith long held by all classes of men. It is a beautiful and edifying "survival" -- one which brings the sainted past close home in our "business and bosoms."

- Ambrose Bierce

12.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

- Buffett, Warren

13.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on -- have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear -- what remains? Nature remains.

- Whitman, Walt

14.

The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him.

- Huxley, Aldous

15.

You ask whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not such a fool as that. But if one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the things they call love, I have what is better -- the experience of Sappho, of Euripides, of Catallus, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Austen, of Bronte, of anyone else I have read.

- Lewis, C. S.

16.

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

- Warhol, Andy

17.

We're going to see a lot more young people entering entrepreneurial ventures.

- Malek, Fred

18.

It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away.

- Geneen, Harold S.

19.

INNOVATION is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.

- Drucker, Peter F.

20.

People who come up with It may not work or What are we going to do if it fails? do not have the credentials to be businessmen. If there is only a 1 percent chance of success, a true businessperson sees that 1 percent as the spark to light a fire.

- Kim Woo-Choong