A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. BarnumBenton, Joel
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A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum
Benton, Joel
Barnum's American Museum; Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891; Circus owners -- United States -- Biography
Do not scatter your powers. Engage in one kind of business only,
and stick to it faithfully until you succeed, or until your
experience shows that you should abandon it. A constant hammering
on one nail will generally drive it home at last, so that it can
be clinched. When a man's undivided attention is centred on one
object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of
value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a
dozen different subjects at once. Many a fortune has slipped
through a man's fingers because he was engaged in too many
occupations at a time. There is good sense in the old caution
against having too many irons in the fire at once.
Be systematic. Men should be systematic in their business. A
person who does business by rule, having a time and place for
everything, doing his work promptly, will accomplish twice as
much and with half the trouble of him who does it carelessly and
slipshod. By introducing system into all your transactions, doing
one thing at a time, always meeting appointments with
punctuality, you will find leisure for pastime and recreation;
whereas the man who only half does one thing, and then turns to
something else, and half does that, will have his business at
loose ends, and will never know when his day's work is done, for
it never will be done. Of course, there is a limit to all these
rules. We must try to preserve the happy medium, for there is
such a thing as being too systematic. There are men and women,
for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can
never find them again. It is too much like the "red-tape"
formality at Washington, and Mr. Dick-ens' "Circumlocution
Office,"--all theory and no result.
To get rich is not always equivalent to being successful. "there
are many rich poor men," while there are many others, honest and
devout men and women, who have never possessed so much money as
some rich persons squander in a week, but who are nevertheless
really richer and happier than any man can ever be while he is a
transgressor of the higher laws of his being.
The inordinate love of money, no doubt, may be and is "the root
of all evil," but money itself, when properly used, is not only a
"handy thing to have in the house," but affords the gratification
of blessing our race by enabling its possessor to enlarge the
scope of human happiness and human influence. The desire for
wealth is nearly universal, and none can say it is not laudable,
provided the possessor of it accepts its responsibilities, and
uses it as a friend to humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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