“Many of us are impersonations of what we know we ought to be.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 82
Henry S. Haskins was a stockbroker and man of letters. His aphorisms were edited and published anonymously with an introduction by Albert Jay Nock in 1940. Wikipedia
“Many of us are impersonations of what we know we ought to be.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 82
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 80
“It is only an uncivilized world that would worship civilization.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 22
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), pp. 91-92
“Imitation can acquire pretty much everything but the power which created the thing imitated.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 96
“The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 74
“It is the semi-learned who scorn the ignorant; the learned know too much about them for that.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 92
“There are many branches of learning, but only the one solid tree-trunk of wisdom.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 91
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 94
“Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity.”
Variant: Sedate ignorance is the last stage of deterioration.
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 135
“When a man’s success becomes commonplace to him, it is his success no longer.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 104
“The highest grades of humanity have passed through the millstones more than once.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 92
“Dive where the water is deep.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 49
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 81
“When study becomes labor, we had better change the subject-matter as quickly as possible.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 35
“Only occasional hours meet our full requirements.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 37
“It is getting what we started to get, not the thing got, which spells success.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 133
“Some talk in quarto volumes and act in pamphlets.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 77
“Contentment has been worn as a crown by no end of sleepy heads.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 104
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 92
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 115
“Compliments have lost their lure by the time a man does not have to fish for them.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 100
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 117
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 77
“Tradition supplants inspiration with the warmed-over article.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 134
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 118
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 107
“He who longs for the far-away proves thereby that he has corrupted the near-at-hand.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 111
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 131
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 116
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 46
“Avoid membership in a body of persons pledged to only one side of anything.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 30
“Who can set us straight in our labyrinth from the mazes of his own?”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 132
“There is not an ounce of our former strength which is not doing some sort of job, right now.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 38
“The way to get the most out of a victory is to follow it with another that makes it look small.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 80
“When you start to indulge yourself, remember it is what they do with invalids and children.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 81
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 29
“If someone offers to furnish a sure test, ask what the test was which made the sure test sure.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 120
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 101
“No conscience which is a palimpsest of the consciences of others is a safe guide.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 29
“Vacant minds have their uses, yet it seems a pity to waste first-class bodies on them.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 70
“The unfortunate who has to travel for amusement lacks capacity for amusement.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 70
“Some have half-baked ideas because their ideals are not heated up enough.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 69
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 68
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 79
“If we exiled our sins, our virtues would get lonely without their old sparring partners.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 31
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 94
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 100
“For a competent audience, uncommon men must have other uncommon men.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 146
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 115
“Many a superior brain is blockaded by inferior thoughts.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 69
“We should train our desires to show the way to our dreams.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 103
“Academic questions are interlopers in a world where so few of the real ones have been answered.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 94
“We are no more alike under the skin than we are on top of it.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 134
“The things we counterfeit are not worth the trouble of falling into disgrace with ourselves.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 140