Trust

Every life is organized around a small number of events that either propel us or bring us to a grinding halt. We spend the years between these episodes benefiting or suffering from their consequences until the arrival of the next forceful moment. A man’s worth is established by the number of these defining circumstances he is able to create for him

Little by little, her body was teaching her how to be quiet again.

New York swelled with the loud optimism of those who believe they have outpaced the future.

that self-interest, if properly directed, need not be divorced from the common good,

Soon, tho, an imbalance became obvious: what he could teach me (nature of instruments, procedures, balance sheet analysis, etc.) was finite, while my domain was inexhaustible. Rules + defs. are fixed; conditions + our reactions to them change hourly. True, he’d provided capital. But after a year or so, I’d more than repaid + could’ve, in theory, br

The first one was that the ideal conditions for business were never given. One had to create them.

Whatever the past may have handed on to us, it is up to each one of us to chisel our present out of the shapeless block of the future.

What all this shows is that from the tenderest age he had the ability to shape the world to his will.

(we make our own weather; personal gain ought to be a public asset)