Firm Quotes - Page 40

• Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.

  Lord Chesterfield

  People, Secret, Dexterity

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.483

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• You must be respectful and assenting, but without being servile and abject. You must be frank, but without indiscretion, and close, without being costive. You must keep up dignity of character, without the least pride of birth, or rank. You must be gay, within all the bounds of decency and respect; and grave, without the affectation of wisdom, which does not become the age of twenty. You must be essentially secret, without being dark and mysterious. You must be firm, and even bold, but with great seeming modesty.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Character, Gay, Dark

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• In families well ordered, there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Sweet, Greek, Persuasion

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• [on the theory of the firm] It is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a 'firm' whose product is 'utility.'

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Mean, Curves, Analysis

  "The theory of the firm in the last ten Years" by Kenneth E. Boulding in "The American Economic Review", Volume 32, No. 4 (pp. 791-802), December 1942.

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• Although a firm swat could bring a recalcitrant child swiftly into line, the changes were usually external, lasting only as long as the swatter remained in view....Permanent transformation had to be internal....The habits of self discipline, as laborious and frustrating as they were to achieve, offered the only real possibility of keeping children safe from their own excesses as well as the omnipresent dangers of society.

  Mary Blakely

  Children, Real, Self

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• Will customers keep supporting the enormous overhead required to sustain ineffectual, unproductive stock picking across an array of thousands of individual funds devoted to every investing 'style' and economic sector or regional subgroup that some marketing idiot can dream up? Not likely. A brutal shakeout is coming and one of its revelations will be that stock picking is a grossly overrated piece of the puzzle, that cost control is what distinguishes a competitive firm from an uncompetitive one.

  Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

  Dream, Style, Marketing

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• Unfortunately, skill in evaluating the business prospects of a firm is not sufficient for successful stock trading, where the key question is whether the information about the firm is already incorporated in the price of the stock. Traders apparently lackthe skill to answer this crucial question, but they appear to be ignorant of their ignorance.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Ignorance, Successful, Skills

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.247, Macmillan

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• Knowing the importance of luck, you should be particularly suspicious when highly consistent patterns emerge from the comparison of successful and less successful firms. In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Successful, Knowing, Luck

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.236, Macmillan

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• The aged oak upon the steep stands more firm and secure if assailed by angry winds; for if the winter bares its head, the more strongly it strikes its roots into the ground, acquiring strength as it loses beauty.

  Pietro Metastasio

  Winter, Roots, Wind

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• When one hears the argument that marriage should be indissoluble for the sake of children, one cannot help wondering whether the protagonist is really such a firm friend of childhood.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Children, Childhood, Sake

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• Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sex, Carriages, Courtship

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.317, Penguin

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• He is less likely to be mistaken who looks forward to a change in the affairs of the world than he who regards them as firm and stable.

  Francesco Guicciardini

  Change, Looks, World

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• The mind is very powerful. Therefore, it requires firm guidance. A powerful jet plane needs a good pilot; the pilot of your mind should be the wisdom that understands its nature.

  Thubten Yeshe

  Powerful, Mind, Needs

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• Indeed we do not really live unless we have friends surrounding us like a firm wall against the winds of the world.

  Charles Hanson Towne

  Friendship, Wall, Wind

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• ...how little our side of the industry did to move its business to the more ethical firms and to make a fuss about conflicted or unethical behavior. Had a number of us moved our business, we might have slowed or even stopped the 30-year slide in conflicted, unethical behavior that we have experienced. I, for one, regret the modest nature of our moves. We all could have done more. We have tolerated a pretty nasty decline in standards. Shame on us.

  Jeremy Grantham

  Regret, Moving, Numbers

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• We shall not fail - if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wise, Mistake, Victory

  A House Divided, delivered 16 June 1858, Springfield, Illinois

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• The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from
  another than from himself at different times.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Diversity, Principles

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.409, Cosimo, Inc.

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• No president in history has been more vilified or was more vilivied during the time he was President than Lincoln. Those who knew him, his secretaries, have written that he was deeply hurt by what was said about him and drawn about him, but on the other hand, Lincoln had the great strength of character never to display it, always able to stand tall and strong and firm no matter how harsh or unfair the criticism might be. These elements of greatness, of course, inspire us all today.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Strength, Hurt, Strong

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• Rock is a great master of life. It teaches us this simple philosophy: Stay firm!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Life, Philosophy, Simple

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• Self-immolation as a way to protest against the injustices or as a way to fight for freedom cannot be accepted! All the fights must be done in the dimension of existence! Your body is your road to everywhere; if you destroy it, you lose all the roads! Stay firm and fight alive; no cause is more valuable than a man's life! Keep your body out of the fire! Don't ever praise the self-immolations; condemn them! Suicide is a defeat! Power is to fight, to fight peacefully, and not to die in agony!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Life, Suicide, Freedom

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• There is one thing sure about life: Life will push us hardly many times! When you are pushed, don't be surprised; stay firm like a plane tree or be elastic like a bamboo!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Life, Tree, Bamboo

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• The good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgement, it ravishes and overwhelms it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Judgement, Lightning, Doe

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.171, Stanford University Press

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• I hit the ball really well... had a lot of good looks at birdie all day, it's firm but you could control your golf ball, for sure. Today I controlled my ball very well. The confidence is definitely there. I feel really good about where I'm at and going into tomorrow.

  Dustin Johnson

  Confidence, Golf, Looks

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• The dirty little secret of what used to be known as Wall Street securities firms-Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns-was that every one of them funded their business in this way to varying degress, and every one of them was always just twenty-four hours away from a funding crisis. The key to day-to-day survival was the skill with which Wall Street executives managed their firms' ongoing reputation in the marketplace.

  William D. Cohan

  Brother, Wall, Dirty

  "House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street". Book by William D. Cohan, March 10, 2009.

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• Responsibility is something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where, and only where, they will be properly judged.

  Vaclav Havel

  Country, Responsibility, Order

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