P. T. Barnum Quotes

"You reflect that he is worth twenty thousand dollars, and you incur no risk by endorsing his note; you like to accommodate him, and you lend your name without taking the precaution of getting security. Shortly after, he shows you the note with your endorsement canceled, and tells you, probably truly, "that he made the profit that he expected by the operation," you reflect that you have done a good action, and the thought makes you feel happy. By and by, the same thing occurs again and you do it again; you have already fixed the impression in your mind that it is perfectly safe to indorse his notes without security."

"I will loose my camel, and trust it to God!" "No, no, not so," said the prophet, "tie thy camel, and trust it to God!"

The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves. Promiscuous almsgiving, without inquiring into the worthiness of the applicant, is bad in every sense. But to search out and quietly assist those who are struggling for themselves, is the kind that “scattereth and yet increaseth.

Money is, in some respects, like fire. It is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.

I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.

The greatest humbug of all is the man who believes — or pretends to believe — that everything and everybody are humbugs.

"Go on in confidence, study the rules, and above all things, study human nature; for
"the proper study of mankind is man," and you will find that while expanding the intellect
and the muscles, your enlarged experience will enable you every day to accumulate more
and more principal, which will increase itself by interest and otherwise, until you arrive
at a state of independence. You will find, as a general thing, that the poor boys get rich and the rich boys get poor."

Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, - it largely increases the product.

Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.

In fact, as a general thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race.

OLD GRIZZLY ADAMS. [37-*] James C. Adams, or “Grizzly Adams,” as he was generally termed, from the fact of his having captured so many grizzly bears, and encountered such fearful perils by his unexampled daring, was an extraordinary character. For many years a hunter and trapper in the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains, he acquired a recklessness which, added to his natural invincible courage, rendered him truly one of the most striking men of the age. He was emphatically what the English call a man of “pluck.” In 1860, he arrived in New York with his famous collection of California animals, captured by himself, consisting of twenty or thirty immense grizzly bears, at the head of which stood “Old Sampson” — now in the American Museum — wolves, half a dozen other species of bear, California lions, tigers, buffalo, elk, etc., and Old Neptune, the great sea-lion, from the Pacific.

Comfort is the enemy of progress.

The noblest art is that of making others happy

The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.

Like most people in Connecticut in those days, I was brought up to attend church regularly on Sunday, and long before I could read I was a prominent scholar in the Sunday school. My good mother taught me my lessons in the New Testament and the Catechism, and my every effort was directed to win one of those “Rewards of Merit,” which promised to pay the bearer one mill, so that ten of these prizes amounted to one cent, and one hundred of them, which might be won by faithful assiduity every Sunday for two years, would buy a Sunday school book worth ten cents. Such were the magnificent rewards held out to the religious ambition of youth.