That is the wearisome part of business - there is no peace, no sense of certain, permanent achievement, no stability. The unexpected, and usually the awful, is forever happening.

One must eliminate the traditional and cling to the essential.

Success of life depends upon keeping one's mind open to opportunity and seizing it when it comes.

I am always glad to think that my education was, for the most part, informal, and had not the slightest reference to a future business career. It left me free and untrammeled to approach my business problems without the limiting influence of specific training.

Commercialism is the blemish on the fair face of American life. Fighting against the terrible conditions of the explorer and pioneer, our forefathers had little time to think of beauty. Hearts and heads became as hardened to the more gracious things of life as did their bodies against physical hardship. Little by little, as nature yielded before the dynamite of their wills, life began to express itself in the same hard terms, and the great commerce of a New World bent everything to its indomitable will.

... overconfidence in one's own ability is the root of much evil. Vanity, egoism, is the deadliest of all characteristics. This vanity, combined with extreme ignorance of conditions the knowledge of which is the very A B C of business and of life, produces more shipwrecks and heartaches than any other part of our mental make-up.

... the deep experience of the lonely climb on the mountain of success brings a wealth beyond power to compute. To you all suffering is understandable and your heart opens wide in sympathy.