John Wanamaker
American merchant and department-store pioneer, 1838-1922
28 quotes.
Quotes by John Wanamaker
- A man’s true estate and wealth is not in houses, railroad bonds, and the like; it is in himself.
- A wise man is a maker of opportunities.
- Beginnings are often small and the progress slow, but the one who studies and strives, who never leaves off his efforts, is sure to be an overcomer.
- Business is not a matter of machinery; it is not a great granite building; it is not iron, steel and rock; it is the human force that is in it; it is the man.
- Every man is at his best when he adds enthusiasm to whatever he honestly believes in.
- Failures are not fatal unless we go to sleep with them.
- Fundamental things are the knowledge of our work, quality of our work, and the love of our work.
- It is for us to go straight on with the duty of the hour, and the way opens as we push ahead.
- It is not extraordinary circumstances, or rich friends, or large capital, that create the golden opportunities of life. It is something in the person that thinks and gets an idea, and seizes the first possible moment to do what he can toward developing it.
- It is not the leap at the start, but the steady going on, that gets there.
- Knocking steadily at the door of opportunity will surely open it to success.
- Life has no rehearsal days in it. Each day must be filled up with its appointed work.
- Neither the first thought nor the first impression is always right. One must walk all around a thing to see it from every angle, to make the best decision.
- Never, never! Surmounting difficulties gives new strength, new ideas, more energies, and creates heroes who otherwise would have been only mere ciphers on life’s battlefields.
- No man on earth is so happy as the man who loves his work and goes home at night with a contented heart because of a good day’s work well done.
- No mistake or failure is as bad as to stop and not try again.
- No one ever did anything worth while in this world, that he was not criticised by somebody.
- Only an honest soul can conduct an honest business.
- Opportunities grow stale unless promptly seized and used.
- Put yourself close to your work, bear hard upon it, stay by it, and get it done.
- The man who makes decisions with a fixed purpose of carrying them out is, humanly speaking, unconquerable.
- The waste of time for want of planning its best uses is the costliest expenditure of our lives.
- There is a price, of patience or labor, that must be paid for the most worthy things.
- To believe you cannot do a thing is a way to make it impossible.
- To consider carefully events of the past lights a lamp upon the way farther on. There are more encouragements than setbacks behind us if we will take the time to count them up.
- To have failed once is not so much a pity as is to not try again.
- Uprightness is even better capital than executive ability.
- Work seldom kills a man, but worry does it. Worry is the rust that spoils the knife-blade.