Business makes men. [ French ]

Business is the salt of life. [ Proverb ]

Time is the soul of business.

A dinner lubricates business. [ Lord Stowell ]

Without business, debauchery. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Shoemaker, stick to your last. [ Pliny ]

Fuss is the froth of business. [ Hood ]

Prudent pauses forward business. [ Proverb ]

He that stays does the business. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Despatch is the soul of business. [ Lord Chesterfield ]

Love and business teach eloquence. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

To throw cold water on a business.

Giving is the business of the rich. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

A great bustle and no business done. [ Proverb ]

Every man does his own business best. [ Proverb ]

Neither above nor below his business. [ Tacitus ]

To go thorough-stitch with a business. [ Proverb ]

Do business, but be not a slave to it. [ Proverb ]

So ends the bloody business of the day. [ Homer ]

I'm called away by particular business.
But I leave my character behind me. [ Sheridan ]

For to give is the business of the rich. [ Goethe ]

Like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. [ William Shakespeare ]

Every body's business is nobody's business. [ Proverb ]

Is it an emperor's business to catch flies? [ Proverb ]

O, that a man might know
The end of this day's business, ere it come.
But it sufficeth that the day will end;
And then the end is known. [ William Shakespeare ]

He that attends to his interior self,
That has a heart, and keeps it; has a mind
That hungers, and supplies it; and who seeks
A social, not a dissipated life,
Has business. [ Cowper ]

'Tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburden'd crawl toward death. [ William Shakespeare ]

Who doth his own business fouls not his hands. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The master looks sharpest to his own business. [ Phaedrus ]

The citizen is at his business before he rise. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Their various cares in one great point combine
The business of their lives, that is - to dine. [ Young ]

Men of business must not break their word twice. [ Proverb ]

Few people do business well who do nothing else. [ Chesterfield ]

Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting where,
And when, and how thy business may be done,
Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller,
Though he alights sometimes, still goeth on. [ George Herbert ]

He that does his own business hurts not his hand. [ Proverb ]

Every man has business and desire, such as it is. [ William Shakespeare ]

Men that have much business must have much pardon. [ Proverb ]

Our leisure gives us more to do than our business.

He that hath a wife and children wants no business. [ Proverb ]

Immortality is not every man's business or concern. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Avoid as much as possible multiplicity of business. [ Bishop Wilson ]

The fool is busy in every one's business but his own. [ Proverb ]

While the discreet advise the fool doth his business. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The greatest business of life is to prepare for death. [ Proverb ]

With an honest and a good man, business is soon ended. [ Proverb ]

Pleasure is far sweeter as a recreation than a business. [ Roswell D. Hitchcock ]

That which is everybody's business is nobody's business. [ Izaak Walton ]

Business may be troublesome, but idleness is pernicious. [ Proverb ]

He that wants business may fit out a ship, or take a wife. [ Proverb ]

Men see better into other people's business than their own. [ Seneca ]

Boldness in business is the first, second, and third thing. [ Proverb ]

To believe a business impossible, is the way to make it so. [ Proverb ]

Death is bitter to a man in prosperity, or in much business. [ Proverb ]

The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature. [ Hare ]

I attend to the business of other people, having lost my own. [ Horace ]

Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy. [ Bulwer Lytton ]

Adieu to the carriage, adieu to the shop, (i.e. to the business. [ French Proverb ]

Business is bought at a dear hand where there is small despatch. [ Bacon ]

Who hath no haste in his business, mountains to him seem valleys. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Be the business never so painful, you may have it done for money. [ Proverb ]

My own business always bores me to death, I prefer other people's. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

It very seldom happens to a man that his business is his pleasure. [ Dr. Johnson ]

The first business of the philosopher is to part with self-conceit. [ Epictetus ]

It is time, conversation and business, that discovers what a man is. [ Proverb ]

To business that we love, we rise betimes and go to it with delight. [ William Shakespeare ]

He that minds not his own business shall never be trusted with mine. [ Proverb ]

Wherever you go, and business be cross, you have a league of bad way. [ Proverb ]

Dress is the great business of all women, and the fixed idea of some. [ Alphonse Karr ]

Let every one engage in the business with which he is best acquainted. [ Propertius ]

Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion (love). [ Bacon ]

Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings. [ Bible ]

All inconsiderate enterprises are impetuous at first, but soon languish. [ Tacitus ]

Business and action strengthen the brain, but too much study weakens it. [ Proverb ]

Let every one mind his own business, and the cows will be well cared for. [ French Proverb ]

He that thinks his business below him, will always be above his business. [ Proverb ]

As much for Mars as for Mercury; as well qualified for war as for business.

The most important part of every business is to know what ought to be done. [ Columella ]

To nurse the flowers, to root up the weeds, is the business of the gardener. [ Bodenstedt ]

By of what is the business of the world made up? Of the wealth of other people. [ Béroalde Verville ]

If one was to think constantly of death the business of life would stand still. [ Johnson ]

Do you fear to trust the word of a man whose honesty you have seen in business? [ Terence ]

A man who cannot mind his own business is not fit to be trusted with the king's. [ Saville ]

Between the business of life and the day of death a space ought to be interposed. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Take the humbug out of this world, and you haven't much left to do business with. [ H. W. Shaw ]

When all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth business straight. [ Bacon ]

To guard from error is not the instructor's business; but to lead the erring pupil. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

He hath made a good progress in a business, that hath thought well of it beforehand. [ Proverb ]

Business despatched Is business well done; but business hurried is business ill done. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of daily virtuous living. [ Carlyle ]

The wise man will commit no business of importance to a proxy when he may do it himself. [ L'Estrange ]

Physicians attend to the business of physicians and workmen handle the tools of workmen. [ Horace ]

Leisure for men of business, and business for men of leisure, would cure many complaints. [ Mrs. Thrale ]

That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought up to business and affairs. [ Feltham ]

Nothing is so great an adversary to those who make it their business to please as expectation. [ Cicero ]

Even business should have a picturesque background. With a proper back-ground a woman can do anything. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

Men who have great riches and little culture rush into business, because they are weary of themselves. [ Horace Greeley ]

It is important not to keep a business engagement if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

A heavenly awe overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought, and must, all earthly business whatsoever. [ Carlyle ]

If thou wishest to put an end to love, attend to business (love yields to employment); then thou wilt be safe. [ Ovid ]

Hasty and adventurous schemes are at first view flattering, in execution difficult and in the issue disastrous. [ Livy ]

The old proverb about having too many irons in the fire is an abominable old lie. Have all in, shovel, tongs, and poker. [ Adam Clarke ]

Have you so much leisure from your own business that you can take care of other people's that does not at all belong to you? [ Terence ]

In navigation, it is the business of the master of a vessel to see that no wind be lost, misemployed, or taken from the ship. [ Lord Bacon ]

Few things are more unpleasant than the transaction of business with men who are above knowing or caring what they have to do. [ Johnson ]

It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

Look forward a little further to the period when all the noise and tumult and business of this world shall have closed forever. [ J. G. Pike ]

Not because of any extraordinary talents did he succeed, but because he had a capacity on a level for business and not above it. [ Tacitus ]

Never shrink from doing anything which your business calls you to do. The man who is above his business may one day find his business above him. [ Drew ]

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war. [ Bovee ]

We must strive to make ourselves really worthy of some employment. We need pay no attention to anything else; the rest is the business of others. [ Bruyere ]

The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Wise sayings are not only for ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby knots in business are pierced and discovered. [ Bacon ]

Happy is he to whom his business itself becomes a puppet, who at length can play with it, and amuse himself with what his situation makes his duty. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Haste and rashness are storms and tempests, breaking and wrecking business; but nimbleness is a full, fair wind, blowing it with speed to the haven. [ Thomas Fuller ]

They consume a considerable quantity of our paper manufacture, employ our artisans in printing, and find business for great numbers of indigent persons. [ Addison ]

I do not believe in luck in war, any more than in luck in business. Luck is a small matter; may affect a battle or a movement, but not a campaign or a career. [ U. S. Grant ]

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity. [ Hazlitt ]

Call on a business man at business times only, and on business, transact your business and go about your business, in order to give him time to finish his business. [ Duke of Wellington ]

Wise sayings are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. [ John Morley ]

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. [ Swift ]

The great business of a man is to improve his mind and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements. [ Pliny ]

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. [ Pope ]

No belief of ours will change the facts or reverse the laws of the spiritual universe; and it is our first business to discover the laws and to learn how the facts stand. [ Dr. Dale ]

Neglect is enough to ruin a man; a man who is in business need not commit forgery or robbery to ruin himself; he has only to neglect his business, and his ruin is certain. [ A. Barnes ]

The finding of your able man, and getting him invested with the symbols of ability, is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in the world. [ Carlyle ]

Nature has given to each one all that as a man he needs, which it is the business of education to develop, if, as most frequently happens, it does not develop better of itself. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs, and ends in iron chains. The more business a man has to do, the more he is able to accomplish, for he learns to economize his time. [ Judge Hale ]

Feasts and business and pleasure and enjoyments seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else: but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness. [ William Law ]

The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. [ Macaulay ]

Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves. [ Sir W. Temple ]

It is expedient to have an acquaintance with those who have looked into the world; who know men, understand business, and can give you good intelligence and good advice when they are wanted. [ Bishop Horne ]

If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death. [ Alexander Smith ]

Be not too presumptuously sure in any business; for things of this world depend upon such a train of unseen chances that if it were in man's hands to set the tables, yet is he not certain to win the game. [ George Herbert ]

The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself. [ Froude ]

It is now the very witching time of night; when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, and do such business as the bitter day would quake to look on. [ William Shakespeare ]

Business is the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves from putrefaction and drives off all those blowing flies that would corrupt it. [ Feltham ]

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion. [ Goethe ]

The great secret both of health and successful industry is the absolute yielding up of one's consciousness to the business and diversion of the hour - never permitting the one to infringe in the least degree upon the other. [ Sismondi ]

Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. [ Thomas Carlyle ]

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. lie that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth lulls his age with the milder business of saving it. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Not in a man's having no business with men, but in having no unjust business with them, and in having all manner of true and just business, can either his or their blessedness be found possible, and this waste world become, for both parties, a home and peopled garden. [ Carlyle ]

Bear your burden manfully. Boys at school, young men who have exchanged boyish liberty for serious business - all who have got a task to do, a work to finish - bear the burden till God gives the signal for repose - till the work is done, and the holiday is fairly earned. [ James Hamilton ]

To men addicted to delights, business is an interruption; to such as are cold to delights, business is an entertainment. For which reason it was said to one who commended a dull man for his application: No thanks to him; if he had no business, he would have nothing to do. [ Steele ]

The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. [ Mark Twain, The Babies ]

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a thing, his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician - I should like to be also something of a man. [ Theodore Parker ]

He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of daily virtuous living; he who trains us to see old truth under academic formularies may be wise or not, as it chances, but we love to see wisdom in unpretending forms, to recognise her royal features under a week-day vesture. [ Carlyle ]

We may put too high a premium on speech from platform and pulpit; at the bar and in the legislative hall, and pay dear for the whistle of our endless harangues. England, and especially Germany, are less loquacious, and attend more to business. We let the eagle, and perhaps too often the peacock, scream. [ Bartol ]

The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Knowledge of books is like that sort of lantern which hides him who carries it, and serves only to pass through secret and gloomy paths of his own; but in the possession of a man of business, it is as a torch in the hand of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered, the way which leads to their prosperity and welfare. [ Steele ]

I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very necessary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature seems to have marked with more or less strength, in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether business pleasures or the fine arts: whoever pursues them to any purpose must do so con amore. [ Melmoth ]

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art. in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts made by successive generations of men - the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid. [ Samuel Smiles ]

It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business. [ Seneca ]

If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion at Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you that in my course I have known and, according to my measure, have cooperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. [ Burke ]

We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose. [ Balzac ]

We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure. [ Landor ]

Business is religion, and religion is business. The man who does not make a business of his religion has a religious life of no force, and the man who does not make a religion of his business has a business life of no character.
The world is God's workshop; the raw materials are His; the ideals and patterns are His; our hands are "the members of Christ," our reward His recognition. Blacksmith or banker, draughtsman or doctor, painter or preacher, servant or statesman, must work as unto the Lord, not merely making a living, but devoting a life. This makes life sacramental, turning its water into wine. This is twice blessed, blessing both the worker and the work. [ Maltbie Babcock ]

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]

We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up - and that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. [ Montaigne ]

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]