Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

George Horace Lorimer

American Journalist and Author, Editor of the Saturday Evening Post

"It’s good to have money and things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy."

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

"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-and that's the same thing."

"A man who is feared to his face is hated behind his back."

"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."

"A fellow and his business should be bosom friends in the office and sworn enemies out of it."

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

"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."

"Beauty is only skin deep, but that's deep enough to satisfy any reasonable man."

"Believe me, it is no time for words when the wounds are fresh and bleeding; no time for homilies when the lightning's shaft has smitten, and the man lies stunned and stricken. Then let the comforter be silent; let him sustain by his presence, not by his preaching; by his sympathetic silence, not by his speech."

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

"Be slow to hire and quick to fire. The time to discover incompatibility of temper and curl-papers is before the marriage ceremony. But when you find that you've hired the wrong man, you can't get rid of him too quick. Pay him an extra month, but don't let him stay another day."

"A man's got to lose more than money to be broke. When a fellow's got a straight backbone and a clear eye his creditors don't have to lie awake nights worrying over his liabilities."

"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."

"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."

"I ain't one of those who believe that a half knowledge of a subject is useless, but it has been my experience that when a fellow has that half knowledge he finds it's the other half which would really come in handy."

"Dear Pierrepont: Your Ma got back safe this morning and she wants me to be sure to tell you not to over-study, and I want to tell you to be sure not to under-study. What we're really sending you to Harvard for is to get a little education that's so good and plenty there. When it's passed around you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. 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."

"If there's anything worse than knowing too little, it's knowing too much. Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust."

"Every fellow is really two men -- what he is and what he might be; and you're never absolutely sure which you're going to bury till he's dead."

"In all your dealings, remember that today is your opportunity; tomorrow some other fellow's."

"It isn't what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about."

"It's been my experience that every man has in him the possibility of doing well some one thing, no matter how humble, and that there's someone, in some place, who wants that special thing done. The difference between a fellow who succeeds and one who fails is that the first gets out and chases after the man who needs him, and the second sits around waiting to be hunted up."

"If you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you have, and you will never get to know them well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts that you haven't time to bother with the dandruff on your shoulders."

"It's been my experience that it takes about all the thought and work which one man can give to run one man right, and if a fellow's putting in five or six hours a day on his neighbor's character, he's mighty apt to scamp the building of his own."

"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."

"It's been my experience that pride is usually a spur to the strong and a drag on the weak. It drives the strong man along and holds the weak one back. It makes the fellow with the stiff upper lip and the square jaw smile at a laugh and laugh at a sneer; it keeps his conscience straight and his back humped over his work; it makes him appreciate the little things and fight for the big ones. But it makes the fellow with the retreating forehead do the thing that looks right, instead of the thing that is right; it makes him fear a laugh and shrivel up at a sneer; it makes him live to-day on to-morrow's salary; it makes him a cheap imitation of some Willie who has a little more money than he has, without giving him zip enough to go out and force luck for himself."

"It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy."

"Let patriotism have its high days and freedom its monuments, and let the triumphs of navigators and generals be annually observed; but surely, beyond all these, a season that stands for as much to the race as Easter does may well be remembered each year with songs and flowers and with every mark of gratitude and of loftiest jubilation."

"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."

"Money ought never to be the consideration in marriage, but it always ought to be a consideration. When a boy and a girl don't think enough about money before the ceremony, they're going to have to think altogether too much about it after; and when a man's doing sums at home evenings, it comes kind of awkward for him to try to hold his wife on his lap."

"It's mighty seldom that a fellow's afraid of what he ought to be afraid of in this world."

"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."

"No one has ever yet succeeded in resolving the narrative of this event into figure or myth, and failures in this direction go to prove that the evidence on which the event rests is unimpeachable. And if it is trustworthy, then Christianity rests on a sure foundation, and our faith is in no sense vain, but warrantable and precious."

"Not a sorrow, not a burden, not a temptation, not a bereavement, not a disappointment, not a care, not a groan or tear, but has its antidote in God's rich and inexhaustible resources."

"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."

"Some men are like oak leaves -- they don't know when they're dead, but still hang right on; and there are others who let go before anything has really touched them."

"The great trouble with some fellows is that a little success goes to their heads. Instead of hiding their authority behind their backs and trying to get close to their men, they use it as a club to keep them off. And a boss with a case of big-head will fill an office full of sore heads."

"The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education. That is where I'm a little skittish about this college business. I'm not starting in to preach to you, because I know a young fellow with the right sort of stuff in him preaches to himself harder than any one else can, and that he's mighty often switched off the right path by having it pointed out to him in the wrong way."

"Some fellows propose to a girl before they know whether her front and her back hair match, and then holler that they're stuck when they find that she's got a cork leg and a glass eye as well. I haven't any sympathy with them. They start out on the principle that married people have only one meal a day, and that of fried oysters and tutti-frutti ice-cream after the theatre. Naturally, a girl's got her better nature and her best complexion along under those circumstances; but the really valuable thing to know is how she approaches ham and eggs at seven a.m., and whether she brings her complexion with her to the breakfast table. And these fellows make a girl believe that they're going to spend all the time between eight and eleven p.m., for the rest of their lives, holding a hundred and forty pounds, live weight, in their lap, and saying that it feels like a feather. The thing to find out is whether, when one of them gets up to holding a ten pound baby in his arms, for five minutes, he's going to carry on as if it weighed a ton."

"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."

"Some men learn all they know from books; others from life; both kinds are narrow. The first are all theory; the second are all practice. It's the fellow who knows enough about practice to test his theories for blow-holes that gives the world a shove ahead, and finds a fair margin of profit in shoving it."

"The only animal which the Bible calls patient is an ass, and that's both good doctrine and good natural history."

"There are two unpardonable sins in this world -- success and failure."

"The more I deal in it, the surer I am that human nature is all of the same critter, but that there's a heap of choice in the cuts."

"The only undignified job I know of is loafing, and nothing can cheapen a man who sponges instead of hunting any sort of work, because he's as cheap already as they can be made."

"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."

"There's nothing comes without calling in this world, and after you've called you've generally got to go and fetch it yourself."

"There's a vast difference between having a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing around loose in your head and getting all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same assortment properly boxed and crated for convenient handling and immediate delivery."

"There is nothing more pitiable than a soulless, sapless, shriveled church, seeking to thrive in a worldly atmosphere, rooted in barren professions, bearing no fruit, and maintaining only the semblance of existence; such a church cannot long survive."

"To deny one's self, to take up the cross, denotes something immeasurably grander than self-imposed penance or rigid conformity to a divine statute. It is the surrender of self to an ennobling work, an absolute subordination of personal advantages and of personal pleasures for the sake of truth and the welfare of others and a willing acceptance of every disability which their interests may entail."