John Jacob Astor

From the opening

The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine o'clock, usually gets rich and is always reliable. Of course, going to bed does not make him rich--I merely mean that such a man will in all probability be up early in the morning and do a big day's work, so his weary bones put him to bed early. Rogues do their work at night. Honest men work by day. It's all a matter of habit, and good habits in America make any man rich. Wealth is a result of habit.

Victor Hugo says, "When you open a school, you close a prison."

This seems to require a little explanation. Victor Hugo did not have in mind a theological school, nor yet a young ladies' seminary, nor an English boarding-school, nor a military academy, and least of all a parochial institute. What he was thinking of was a school where people--young and old--were taught to be self-respecting, self-reliant and efficient--to care for themselves, to help bear the burdens of the world, to assist themselves by adding to the happiness of others.

Victor Hugo fully realized that the only education that serves is the one that increases human efficiency, not the one that retards it. An education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles, position--immunity--may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it weakens the race and its gain on the whole is nil.

Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service, gets great returns. Action and reaction are equal, and the radiatory power of the planets balances their attraction. The love you keep is the love you give away.

A bumptious colored person wearing a derby tipped over one eye, and a cigar in his mouth pointing to the northwest, walked into a hardware store and remarked, "Lemme see your razors."

A short sample. Read the whole book

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