Famous quotes containing the word account:
“Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixt you,—the trade drops at once: and this is the reason ... why travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,—owing to their [the natives’] suspicion ... that there is nothing to be extracted from the conversation ... worth the trouble of their bad language.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“At length he would call to let us know where he was waiting for us with his canoe, when, on account of the windings of the stream, we did not know where the shore was, but he did not call often enough, forgetting that we were not Indians.... This was not because he was unaccommodating, but a proof of superior manners. Indians like to get along with the least possible communication and ado. He was really paying us a great compliment all the while, thinking that we preferred a hint to a kick.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty five years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account today; and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow. Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)