P. T. Barnum

Econ­omy is not mean­ness.

but get­ting in debt for what you eat and drink and wear is to be avoided

will only get in debt for some land

Money is in some re­spects like fire; it is a very ex­cel­lent ser­vant but a ter­ri­ble mas­ter.

The Roth­schilds have an­other maxim: “Never have any­thing to do with an un­lucky man or place.” That is to say, never have any­thing to do with a man or place which never suc­ceeds, be­cause, al­though a man may ap­pear to be hon­est and in­tel­li­gent, yet if he tries this or that thing and al­ways fails, it is on ac­count of some fault or in­fir­mity that you may not be able to dis­cover but nev­er­the­less which must ex­ist.

If a man has plenty of money, he ought to in­vest some­thing in ev­ery­thing that ap­pears to prom­ise suc­cess, and that will prob­a­bly ben­e­fit mankind; but let the sums thus in­vested be mod­er­ate in amount, and never let a man fool­ishly jeop­ar­dize a for­tune that he has earned in a le­git­i­mate way, by in­vest­ing it in things in which he has had no ex­pe­ri­ence.

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

Some men have a fool­ish habit of telling their busi­ness se­crets. If they make money they like to tell their neigh­bors how it was done. Noth­ing is gained by this, and oft­times much is lost. Say noth­ing about your prof­its, your hopes, your ex­pec­ta­tions, your in­ten­tions. And this should ap­ply to let­ters as well as to con­ver­sa­tion. Goethe makes Mephistophiles say: “Never write a let­ter nor de­stroy one.” Busi­ness men must write let­ters, but they should be care­ful what they put in them. If you are los­ing money, be spe­cially cau­tious and not tell of it, or you will lose your rep­u­ta­tion.

Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us.

That we are born “free and equal” is a glorious truth in one sense, yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be. One may say; “there is a man who has an income of fifty thousand dollars per annum, while I have but one thousand dollars; I knew that fellow when he was poor like myself; now he is rich and thinks he is better than I am; I will show him that I am as good as he is; I will go and buy a horse and buggy; no, I cannot do that, but I will go and hire one and ride this afternoon on the same road that he does, and thus prove to him that I am as good as he is.”