The Business Man

If there is any thing on earth I hate, it is a genius. Your geniuses are all arrant asses -- the greater the genius the greater the ass -- and to this rule there is no exception whatever. Especially, you cannot make a man of business out of a genius, any more than money out of a Jew, or the best nutmegs out of pineknots. The creatures are always going off at a tangent into some fantastic employment, or ridiculous speculation, entirely at variance with the "fitness of things," and having no business whatever to be considered as a business at all. Thus you may tell these characters immediately by the nature of their occupations. If you ever perceive a man setting up as a merchant or a manufacturer; or going into the cotton or tobacco trade, or any of those eccentric pursuits; or getting to be a dry-goods dealer, or soap-boiler, or something of that kind; or pretending to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith, or a physician -- anything out of the usual way -- you may set him down at once as a genius, and then, according to the rule-of-three, he's an ass.

- Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Business Man'.

Comments

Dr. Vj said…
Res Sir,
This article of yours soemhow seems to be a bit harsh on professsions and the significance of being grt business men or achievement in the field of business.. Probably some deletions and softening would have made it better!
Ray Titus said…
Hi Vijay...Am sorry you feel that way; Credit the article to Edgar Allan Poe, the 'macabre styled' literary genuis...not me...wish I had the wisdom to write the way he does...

Tell you what, I had such a grin while reading the 'Businessman'...it reinforced what I have always tried to do, albeit unsuccessfully, not to take myself too seriously...

Everytime I re-read the article, my grin only gets bigger :), Hope you can see what I see :)

Popular Posts