The Project Gutenberg Project

The number of business men to-day in possession of funds in excess of their private wants and business requirements is far greater than it was ten years ago, and is constantly increasing. These men are confronted with a real investment problem.

- George Garr Henry, How to Invest Money (1908) [full text]

He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver—the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the work in his loom, as if they had been unborn children—thought of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years, through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite hidden by countless days of weaving.

- George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861) [full text]

A philosopher has noted that at certain periods a great many stupid people have a good deal of stupid money. This condition, describable as plethora, is succeeded by another catalogued as panic.

- Edgar Saltus, The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident (1905) [full text]

Always take a trustworthy newspaper, and thus keep thoroughly posted in regard to the transactions of the world. He who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species. In these days of telegraphs and steam, many important inventions and improvements in every branch of trade are being made, and he who don’t consult the newspapers will soon find himself and his business left out in the cold.

- P.T. Barnum, The Art of Money-Getting, or Golden Rules for Making Money (1880) [full text]