Profitably Quotes

“The popular conception of any philosophical doctrine is necessarily imperfect, and very generally unjust. Lucretius is often alluded to as an atheistical writer, who held the silly opinion that the universe was the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms readers are asked to consider how long letters must be shaken in a bag before a complete annotated edition of Shakespeare could result from the process; and after being reminded how much more complex the universe is than the works of Shakespeare, they are expected to hold Lucretius, with his teachers and his followers, in derision. A nickname which sticks has generally some truth in it, and so has the above view, but it would be unjust to form our judgment of a man from his nickname alone, and we may profitably consider what the real tenets of Lucretius were, especially now that men of science are beginning, after a long pause in the inquiry, once more eagerly to attempt some explanation of the ultimate constitution of matter.”

— Fleeming Jenkin

“One of the secrets of a successful life is to know how to be a little profitably crazy.”

— Josephine Tey

“I see no reason for denying so fundamental an urge, ruin or no. It is more important to live the life one wishes to live, and to go down with it if necessary, quite contentedly, than to live more profitably but less happily. Yet to achieve content under sometimes adverse circumstances, requires first an adjustment within oneself, and this I had already made, and after that, a recognition that one is not unique in being obliged to toil and struggle and suffer. This is the simplest of all facts and the most difficult for the individual ego to accept. As I look back on those first difficult times at the Creek, when it seemed as though the actual labor was more than I could bear, and the making of a living on the grove impossible, it was old black Martha who drew aside a curtain and led me in to the company of all those who had loved the Creek and been tormented by it.”

— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”

— Voltaire

“(a) Going to Oxford didn't necessarily make a person clever.
(b) Cleverness didn't necessarily make a good prime minister.
(c) If a person couldn't even run a pickle factory profitably, how was that person going to run a whole country?
And, most important of all:
(d) All Indian mothers are obsessed with their sons and are therefore poor judges of their abilities.”

— Arundhati Roy

“When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find ... And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgment concerning whom, amongst the total chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

“As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. It's a big universe, of course, so He, She, or It, could be profitably employed in many places. But what has clearly been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God. And then after a while, we explain it, and so that's no longer God's realm.”

— Carl Sagan

“You can't win without being patient. You know why? Success comes when you value time by using it profitably. It comes over time; delay is not denial!”

— Israelmore Ayivor

“But then the subject turned to the spiritual life and Meg talked about her many visits to ashrams in India and her admiration for Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi. That got in the way, especially because he told her of his skepticism regarding the guru industry, and suggested she might profitably read Gita Mehta's book Karma Cola. "Why are you so cynical?" she asked him, as if she genuinely wanted to know the answer, and he said that if you grew up in India it was easy to conclude that these people were fakes. "Yes, of course there are lots of charlatans," she said, reasonably, "but can't you discriminate?" He shook his head sadly. "No," he said. "No, I can't." That was the end of their chat.”

— Salman Rushdie

“In business, real jobs profitably produce goods and services that people value more highly than their alternatives. Subsidizing inefficient jobs is costly, wastes resources, and weakens our economy.”

— Charles Koch

“Moral experience-the actual possession and exercise of good character-is necessary truly to understand moral principles and profitably to apply them.”

— Aristotle

“To be a good Briton, a man must trade profitably, marry respectably, live cleanly, avoid excess, revere the established order, and wear his heart in his breeches pocket or anywhere but on his sleeve.”

— William Ernest Henley

“As my men could profitably employ themselves on these streams, I moved slowly along, averaging not more than five or six miles per day and sometimes remained two days at the same encampment.”

— William Henry Ashley

“If you feel no love for people - don't get up from your chair.' Nekhlyudov was thinking of himself. 'Stay involved with yourself, and things, anything you like, but don't get involved with people. Just as you can eat healthily and profitably only when you are hungry, so you can have profitable and healthy dealings with people only when you have love for them. But if you let yourself deal with people without any love for them, as you did with your brother-in-law yesterday, there are no limits to the cruelty and brutality you can inflict on others - as I have seen today - and no limits to the suffering you can bring on yourself, as I can see from the whole of my life.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“Any business owner can tell you that if their company isn't performing profitably and up to standards, one of two things will happen: either you make changes to improve its efficiency, or a competitor will drive you out of business. Market forces have a way of cutting to the chase rather quickly.”

— J. B. Pritzker

“The John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics was originally intended to bring scholars and politicians into closer contact, on the assumption that other office-holders can use academics as profitably as Kennedy did during his political career.”

— Donald E. Graham

“Non illegitimi te carborundum, the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is "Don't let the bastards get you down." Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult.”

— Julia Cameron

“People invest in businesses that they believe have the leadership, mission and team to grow and operate profitably.”

— Robert Kiyosaki

“'But I might ask you as profitably why you've never seen fit to invent airborne vehicles? One small stolen airplane would have spared you and me a great deal of difficulty!'
'How would it ever occur to a sane man that he could fly?' Estraven said sternly. It was a fair response, on a world where no living thing is winged.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Yet whether wisdom can be any more profitably pursued than happiness is a question.”

— Patrick O'Brian

“Abraham Lincoln said, "I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this Book upon reason that you can and the balance upon faith, and you will live and die a better man." Coleridge said he believed the Bible to be the Word of God because, as he put it, "It finds me." "If you want encouragement," John Bunyan wrote, "entertain the promises.”

— Billy Graham

“Let woman then go on-not asking favors, but claiming as a right the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being-let her receive encouragement for the proper cultivation of all her powers, so that she may enter profitably into the active business of life.”

— Lucretia Mott

“Our leisure is the time the Devil seizes upon to make us work for him; and the only way we can avoid conscription into his ranks is to keep all our leisure moments profitably employed.”

— James Ellis

“The art of banking is always to balance the risk of a run with the reward of a profit. The tantalizing factor in the equation is that riskier borrowers pay higher interest rates. Ultimate safety - a strongbox full of currency - would avail the banker nothing. Maximum risk - a portfolio of loans to prospective bankrupts at usurious interest rates - would invite disaster. A good banker safely and profitably treads the middle ground.”

— James Grant

“DaimlerChrysler made significant progress in the year 2005, but our earnings are still not where we want them to be. We intend to grow profitably and to create added value over the long term - for the benefit of our customers, employees and shareholders.”

— Dieter Zetsche

“A humble heart is a great help towards profitably hearing the gospel.”

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Benefit. A humble heart is a great help towards profitably hearing the gospel. The engrafted soul saving word is not received except with meekness.”

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“In no department can a leader spend time more profitably than in the selection of the men who are to accomplish the work.”

— Douglas Mawson

“Giles' shameful death was, of course, the sign of a crazy old man's inability to adapt to a new world. But his belief, that if there was no work to be had on our estate, then there was nothing for him but the workhouse, was probably right ... His death was not a sensible reaction to our attempts to farm rationally and profitably. The last thing I needed was a pang of conscience about such an old fool. And I would be mad myself if I even considered that his death should be laid at my door, that I had made his world
Wideacre
unbearable.”

— Philippa Gregory

“Only those who have earned leisure know how to use it profitably.”

— Elsa Maxwell

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”

— Anthony Bourdain

“Harry is my elder brother. He is the wiser one who leads Percept, he shows us the path. My job is to run it, create the relationships, and run the business as profitably as I can. Harry acquires, merges, expands he is responsible for Percept's growth.”

— Shailender Singh

“For proponents of ecosystem-based management,the good news is that another new book, Ecosystem-based Management for the Oceans, conveys the topic at its state-of-the-art level of development ... both Marine Ecosystems and Global Change and Ecosystem-based Management for the Oceans are valuable troves that could profitably be mined, and any academic bookshelf would wear them well.”

— Carl Safina

“As difficult as it is for a writer to find a publisher-admittedly a daunting task-it is twice as difficult for a publisher to sort through the chaff, select the wheat, and profitably publish a worthy list.”

— Olivia Goldsmith

“Some may say [journal keeping] is a great deal of trouble. But we should not call anything trouble which brings to pass good. I consider that portion of my life which has been spent in keeping journals and writing history to have been very profitably spent. - If there was no other motive in view [except] to have the privilege of reading over our journals and for our children to read, it would pay for the time spent in writing it.”

— Wilford Woodruff

“Nature has color-coded groups of individuals so that statistically reliable predictions of their adaptability to intellectual rewarding and effective lives can easily be made and profitably used by the pragmatic man-in-the street.”

— William Shockley

“One should, I think, always give children money, for they will spend it for themselves far more profitably than we can ever spend it for them.”

— Rose Macaulay

“Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.”

— Adam Smith

“The time that I would spend revisiting my old Get Your War On strips is more profitably spent Googling myself and reading comments about how people hate my pencil-sharpening business.”

— David Rees

“It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other things, the undisturbed enjoyment of friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it.”

— Agnes Repplier

“My monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced by computers. Fortunately, for me personally, that conclusion has had no practical impact, else there would have been no Central Bank of Sweden to have established the award [Nobel Prize] I am honored to receive.”

— Milton Friedman

“This truth may be handled either sinfully or profitably; sinfully as when it is treated on only to satisfy curiosity, and to keep up a mere barren speculative dispute ... This point of election ... is not to be agitated in a verbal and contentious way, but in a saving way, to make us tremble and to set us upon a more diligent and close striving with God in prayer, and all other duties.”

— Anthony Burgess

“The price pattern reminds you that every movement of importance is but a repetition of similar price movements, that just as soon as you can familiarize yourself with the actions of the past, you will be able to anticipate and act correctly and profitably upon forthcoming movements.”

— Jesse Lauriston Livermore

“I urge you to spend your youth profitably in study and virtue ... In brief, let me see in you an abyss of knowledge.”

— Francois Rabelais

“Thou wilt always rejoice in the evening if thou has spent the day profitably.”

— Thomas A Kempis

“Allowing for exceptions, there is still one basic difference between the traditional arts and the mass-media arts: in the traditional arts, the artist grows; in a mass medium, the artist decays profitably.”

— Pauline Kael

“The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is ... .we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism.”

— Hannah Arendt

“In my library I have profitably and pleasantly dwelt among the shining lights, with which the learned, wise, and holy men of all ages have illuminated the world.”

— Richard Baxter

“To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives? - and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared to live more worthily and profitably?”

— Henry David Thoreau

“The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.”

— Henry David Thoreau