Penny Benjamin Quotes

A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned

First, let honesty and industry be thy constant companions; and, Secondly, spend one penny less than thy clear gains.

As one might gather from a painting of him scowling in a tall stovepipe hat, Day saw himself as a businessman, not a journalist. ''He needed a newspaper not to reform, not to arouse, but to push the printing business of Benjamin H. Day.'' Day's idea was to try selling a paper for a penny - the going price for many everyday items, like soap or brushes. At that price, he felt sure he could capture a much larger audience than his 6-cent rivals. But what made the prospect risky, potentially even suicidal, was that Day would then be selling his paper at a loss. What day was contemplating was a break with the traditional strategy for making profit: selling at a price higher than the cost of production. He would instead rely on a different but historically significant business model: reselling the attention of his audience, or advertising. What Day understood-more firmly, more clearly than anyone before him-was that while his readers may have thought themselves his customers, they were in fact his product.

It also had the benefit of being extremely cheap. Discarded marine artifacts were in abundant supply and Joe could go down to the salvage yards near the harbor and pick up the flotsam for pennies per pound. And so the first store was “a riot of marine artifacts including a ship’s bell, oars, netting, and half a row boat.

When Joe made up his mind to sell, it happened very quickly. The final deal was a one-page contract and a handshake. The Albrechts were to “neither put a penny in, nor take a penny out.” Joe would stay on as CEO. No changes would be made to the way TJ’s was run. But Joe, the benign dictator, man of ten thousand ideas, was not capable of being someone else’s employee

More than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin stood before the Constitutional Convention and said, “I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live the more convincing proof I see of this truth: that God governs the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without His aid?” Franklin was obviously making reference to Jesus’ words: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows”. (Matthew 10.29-31).

Realizing he doesn’t have any clothes on, James does a covert ninja move to retrieve his boxer shorts and is caught mid-roll as Penny emerges from the bathroom.

the lawn from a grassy field to a twilit garden. As if on cue, Sebastian arrived leading a parade into the clearing, and called everyone to order. “Honored guests,” he shouted, holding his hands out in greeting. “I’m pleased to announce we have record attendance this year. This is in no small part due to the efforts of our friends-of-the-farm coordinator, Benjamin Thorndike, and his new assistant, Jason Adams.” Polite applause accompanied an occasional cheer. One woman at the back called out, “Which ones are they, Sebastian?” The managing director scanned the crowd and pointed. “Over there. Benjamin’s the one on the porch steps with the camera, taking your pictures. And you can’t miss Jason. He’s the tallest here, but just in case, raise your hand, Jason.” Helena watched, bemused, as Jason raised his hand. He seemed embarrassed, but she thought he was enjoying the celebrity. Once Sebastian completed his welcome, the crowd headed for the food and drink, then milled around sipping apple wine and taking in the scene. Two farm members mounted the steps of the great house and began to play music on a penny whistle and violin, a lilting tune from a time when farmers would gather to celebrate the harvest. A few people came over to meet

remembered. This man was paid to kill Penny and put me through agony. I might not need the cane forever, but my leg will never be the same. It was true. Yet his sympathy did not wane. He could want justice for Penny, feel sad and angry as he recalled his weeks of pain, and still view Freddy as an object of pity; a man who'd aspired to only the bare bones of life and been denied them all the

To be an intelligent investor, you must also refuse to judge your financial success by how a bunch of total strangers are doing. You’re not one penny poorer if someone in Dubuque or Dallas or Denver beats the S & P 500 and you don’t. No one’s gravestone reads “HE BEAT THE MARKET.” I once interviewed a group of retirees in Boca Raton, one of Florida’s wealthiest retirement communities. I asked these people—mostly in their seventies—if they had beaten the market over their investing lifetimes. Some said yes, some said no; most weren’t sure. Then one man said, “Who cares? All I know is, my investments earned enough for me to end up in Boca.” Could there be a more perfect answer? After all, the whole point of investing is not to earn more money than average, but to earn enough money to meet your own needs. The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go. In the end, what matters isn’t crossing the finish line before anybody else but just making sure that you do cross it.

Max Weber, for example, made the mistake. He imagined that the Protestant ethic encouraged hard work and high saving, instancing Benjamin Franklin. Weber didn’t get the joke about Father Abraham and a penny saved (few have, actually). Franklin’s special gift was not working hard—which hard work, after all, the peasant planting rice does daily. His gift was innovation, at a frenetic rate, for which he was honored and required no patents for—his stove, bifocals, battery, street lighting, postal sorting shelves, the lightning rod, the flexible catheter, the glass harmonica, a map of the Gulf Stream, and the theory of electricity.