Top 50 George Horace Lorimer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”

— George Horace Lorimer

Featured in: Fulfillment Quotes, Dedication Quotes, Professional Growth Quotes, Goal Setting Quotes, Satisfaction Quotes

2. “It is good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy.”

— George Horace Lorimer

Featured in: Smart Quotes

3. “Say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a man’s listening he isn’t telling on himself and he’s flattering the fellow who is.”

— George Horace Lorimer

4. “If there’s anything worse than knowing too little, it’s knowing too much. Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there’s no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust.”

— George Horace Lorimer

5. “Back of every noble life there are principles that have fashioned it.”

— George Horace Lorimer

6. “There’s a vast difference between having a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing around loose in your head and getting all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same assortment properly boxed and crated for convenient handling and immediate delivery.”

— George Horace Lorimer

7. “Procrastination is the longest word in the language, but there’s only one letter between its ends when they occupy their proper places in the alphabet.”

— George Horace Lorimer

Featured in: Procrastination Quotes

8. “The aim of the college, for the individual student, is to eliminate the need in his life for the college; the task is to help him become a self-educating man.”

— George Horace Lorimer

9. “Clothes don’t make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that’s a pretty considerable area of the human animal.”

— George Horace Lorimer

10. “There is one excuse for every mistake a man can make, but only one. When a fellow makes the same mistake twice he’s got to throw up both hands and own up to carelessness or cussedness.”

— George Horace Lorimer

11. “A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung.”

— George Horace Lorimer

12. “When an office begins to look like a family tree, you’ll find worms tucked away snug and cheerful in most of the apples.”

— George Horace Lorimer

13. “Consider carefully before you say a hard word to a man, but never let a chance to say a good one go by. Praise judiciously bestowed is money invested.”

— George Horace Lorimer

14. “Because a fellow has failed once or twice or a dozen times, you don’t want to set him down as a failure till he’s dead or loses his courage.”

— George Horace Lorimer

15. “A man’s got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having.”

— George Horace Lorimer

16. “Doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days. Along toward the middle of the month a fellow begins to long for a broiled crow or a slice of cold dog.”

— George Horace Lorimer

17. “In all your dealings, remember that today is your opportunity; tomorrow some other fellow’s.”

— George Horace Lorimer

18. “Never ask a man what he knows, but what he can do.”

— George Horace Lorimer

19. “It isn’t what a man’s got in the bank, but what he’s got in his head, that makes him a great merchant.”

— George Horace Lorimer

20. “And a diplomatist is one who lets the other fellow think he’s getting his way, while all the time he’s having his own. It never does any special harm to let people have their way with their mouths.”

— George Horace Lorimer

21. “You’ll find that education’s about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost.”

— George Horace Lorimer

22. “When the tongue lies, the eyes tell the truth.”

— George Horace Lorimer

23. “Never threaten, because a threat is a promise to pay that it isn’t always convenient to meet, but if you don’t make it good it hurts your credit. Save a threat till you’re ready to act, and then you won’t need it.”

— George Horace Lorimer

24. “Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there’s nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us.”

— George Horace Lorimer

25. “Colleges don’t make fools, they only develop them.”

— George Horace Lorimer

26. “Give fools the first and women the last word.”

— George Horace Lorimer

27. “True love is not only blind, but too gallant to ask a lady’s age.”

— George Horace Lorimer

28. “Having money and buying things with money is a good thing. But also do not forget to check occasionally to lose if you do not buy anything with money or not.”

— George Horace Lorimer

29. “A lesson learned at the muzzle has the virtue of never being forgotten.”

— George Horace Lorimer

30. “I ain’t one of those who believe that a half knowledge of a subject is useless, but it has been my experience that when a fellow has that half knowledge he finds it’s the other half which would really come in handy.”

— George Horace Lorimer

31. “A fellow and his business should be bosom friends in the office and sworn enemies out of it.”

— George Horace Lorimer

32. “Some men are like oak leaves – they don’t know when they’re dead, but still hang right on; and there are others who let go before anything has really touched them.”

— George Horace Lorimer

33. “It’s all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods.”

— George Horace Lorimer

34. “When a fellow’s got what he set out for in this world, he should go off into the woods for a few weeks now and then to make sure that he’s still a man, and not a plug-hat and a frock-coat and a wad of bills.”

— George Horace Lorimer

35. “Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.”

— George Horace Lorimer

36. “The great secret of good management is to be more alert to prevent a man’s going wrong than eager to punish him for it.”

— George Horace Lorimer

37. “The solution to our energy needs must go through a show of respect for nature, not, once again, a policy that does violence to our hills.”

— George Horace Lorimer

38. “Were we all one body, we should lose the tremendous stimulation that comes from the present arrangement, and I fear that our uniformity would become the uniformity of death and the tomb.”

— George Horace Lorimer

39. “Those who succeed can’t forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can’t forgive him for being a success.”

— George Horace Lorimer

40. “You’ve got to preach short sermons to catch sinners.”

— George Horace Lorimer

41. “Culture is not a matter of a change of climate.”

— George Horace Lorimer

42. “When you make a mistake, don’t make a second one – keeping it to yourself. Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest. The deeper you hide them in the case the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast table.”

— George Horace Lorimer

43. “Every fellow is really two men – what he is and what he might be; and you’re never absolutely sure which you’re going to bury till he’s dead.”

— George Horace Lorimer

44. “What you know is a club for yourself, and what you don’t know is a meat-ax for the other fellow.”

— George Horace Lorimer

45. “I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it’s been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.”

— George Horace Lorimer

46. “There are two unpardonable sins in this world – success and failure.”

— George Horace Lorimer

47. “Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a shortcut to the second.”

— George Horace Lorimer

48. “A business man’s conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler rules than any other function of the human animal. They are: Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking.”

— George Horace Lorimer

49. “Books are all right, but dead men’s brains are no good unless you mix a live one’s with them.”

— George Horace Lorimer

50. “When a man makes a specialty of knowing how some other fellow ought to spend his money, he usually thinks in millions and works for hundreds.”

— George Horace Lorimer