J.P. Morgan, then past 70, was asked by the son of an eminent father why he [Morgan] didn't retire. When did your father retire? asked Mr. Morgan, without looking up from his desk. In 1902. When did he die? Oh, at the end of 1904. Huh! snapped Mr. Morgan, If he had kept on working he would have been alive still. Work is God's best medicine. It is God's medicine for man.
B. C. ForbesA big business man was telling Henry Ford about a coach driver of super-expertness with his whip. The driver was telling how he could flick a fly off his horse's ear with his whip-and, a fly alighting just then, he promptly did so. Next he spied a grasshopper beside the road, and he flicked it off with equal dexterity. A little further along the road the passenger noticed an insect on a bush, and nudged the driver to get him. Not on your life, replied the master of the whip. That there insect is a hornet sitting on his nest with an organization behind him. I leave him alone.
B. C. ForbesJustice must be blind to the hardness or softness of a man's hands, as well as to the leanness or fatness of his pocketbook
B. C. ForbesIt is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal.
B. C. ForbesThe man of fixed ingrained principles who has mapped out a straight course, and has the courage and self-control to adhere to it, does not find life complex. Complexities are all of our own making.
B. C. ForbesHappiness is normally the prime search of every rational human being. One way to derive increasing happiness during the year we have just entered is to strive diligently to promote the happiness of others, to think of them first, yourself second. Happiness is the greatest tonic, the greatest elixir, of all. Worry is among the worst poisons. One sensible New Year resolution: I will do my utmost to have consideration for others, to exercise usefulness, to radiate happiness, to conquer worrying over things I cannot possibly remedy.
B. C. ForbesEmployers, have you ever stopped to reckon what the goodwill of your workers is worth? ... In most large concerns it would be worth more in dollars and cents to have the goodwill of the working force than of those on the outside. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the average working force is capable of increasing its production 25% or more whenever the workers fell so inclined. Workers animated by ill will cannot possibly give results equal to those of workers animated by goodwill. The tragic fact appears to be that a tremendous number of working forces are not so animated.
B. C. Forbes