C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Credit—Creditor
Public credit is suspicion asleep.
What is bought is cheaper than a gift.
If confidence is a plant of slow growth, credit is one which matures much more slowly.
Lose not thine own for want of asking for it; ’twill get thee no thanks.
Every man’s credit and consequence are proportioned to the sums which he holds in his chest.
The creditor whose appearance gladdens the heart of a debtor may hold his head in sunbeams and his foot on storms.
Creditors have better memories than debtors; and creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times.
Private credit is wealth; public honor is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports its flight; strip him of his plumage, and you pin him to the earth.
He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.
We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
Credit is a matter so subtle in its essence, that, as it may be obtained almost without reason, so, without reason, may it be made to melt away.
The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or nine at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day.
There is nothing in this world so fiendish as the conduct of a mean man when he has the power to revenge himself upon a noble one in adversity. It takes a man to make a devil; and the fittest man for such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery creditor.