
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 168
Source: Isaiah's Job (1936), III
Context: If you can tough the fancy of the masses, and have the sagacity to keep always one jump ahead of their vagaries and vacillations, you can get good returns in money from serving the masses, and good returns also in a mouth-to-ear type of notoriety … Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 168
Part Eleven “The Dream Season”, Chapter ii “Representations”, Section 2 (p. 479)
(1987), BOOK THREE: OUT OF THE EMPTY QUARTER
As quoted in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert Andrews, p. 742
Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 3, The Market Is Smarter Than You Are, p. 76.
The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship. He was right. Because of work, no matter what we do we keep looking at our watches. The only thing "free" about so-called free time is that it doesn't cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor as a factor of production not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair. Coal and steel don't do that. Lathes and typewriters don't do that. But workers do.
“If great renown is won by true merit, and if virtue is considered in itself and apart from success, then all that we praise in any of our ancestors was Fortune's gift.”
Si veris magna paratur
fama bonis et si successu nuda remoto
inspicitur virtus, quidquid laudamus in ullo
maiorum, fortuna fuit.
Book IX, line 593 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia
Source: Hilkhot De'ot (Laws Concerning Character Traits), Chapter 2, Section 7, p. 33