—Shakespeare, “Coriolanus.”
We say to you (our opponents) that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in the spring and toils all summer, and who by application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding-places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade, are as much business men as the few financial magnates who in a back room corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.
Oh do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for power equal to your tasks; then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life, which has come to you by the grace of God.
—Phillips Brooks.
There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it hardly behooves any of us,
To talk about the rest of us.
—Robert Louis Stevenson.