"Vanderbilt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the insolent corporation which fattens upon this franchise surrendered the privilege of murdering its linemen unpunished, only when its poles were cut and its wires torn down. A more classic application of the Vanderbilt motto in action it would be hard to find, or a more thorough demonstration of the inadequacy of capitalism to rule the genii itself has summoned. Characteristic of the low plane of humane feeling in State and city is the substitution ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... considerate softness. Mr. Smith smiled a large, expansive smile and leaned back in his chair. The moment was perfect. His apprehensions were over for the time. Maria was with him, she was his, and he was giving her all this. Could an Astor or a Vanderbilt offer more to the woman of his heart? Henry Smith looked at the plush and gilding about ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... truly executive minds in America. Indeed, as respects this feature, we doubt if any exception could be made to according him the very first position among our business men. Others may occasionally equal him in grasp of intellect, as in the instance of George Law, or Cornelius Vanderbilt; but, considered in the point of executive ability, we consider him unapproachable. He has long been chief among American dry goods dealers, and is known far and wide as the largest merchant (that is, buyer and seller) on this continent, and perhaps in the world. Yet there ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... regarded as wallowing in money. She left off being middle-class, and was received into the lower upper-class, the upper part of this upper-class being reserved for great names like Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With these Mrs. Twist could not compete. She would no doubt some day, for Edward was only thirty and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was able to add to the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss of the elder Twist with less of bleakness in her resignation. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... William K. Vanderbilt, when he last visited Constantinople, one day invited Coquelin the elder, so celebrated for his powers as a mimic, who happened to be in the city at the time, to give a private recital on board his yacht, lying in the Bosphorus. Coquelin ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Cherbourg, detailing his cruise on the Georgia from leaving England, to Bahia, Trinidad, Cape of Good Hope, to France again. Such a bright, dashing letter! We laughed extravagantly over it when he told how they readily evaded the Vanderbilt, knowing she would knock them into "pie"; how he and the French Captain quarreled when he ordered him to show his papers, and how he did not know French abuse enough to enter into competition with him, so went back a first and second time to Maury when the man ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... millionaire's daughter or an actress, a society beauty or the heroine of a fashionable scandal—enters a big department store, the news of her advent runs from counter to counter like wildfire. In some shops the appearance of an Astor, a Vanderbilt, or a Princess Patricia would send up the mercury of excitement forty degrees higher than that of a Miss or Mr. Rolls. But at the Hands, Peter the Great's son and daughter would have drawn all eyes from the reigning Czar ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... give one of those little stretches and swell up a bit that's a sign I am commencing to get wealthy. I switched over and took a couple of gin fizzes, and then it hit me I was richer than Jay Gould ever was; I had the Rothschilds backed clear off the board; and I made William H. Vanderbilt look like a hundred-to-one shot. You understand, Jim, this was yesterday. I got a little red spot in each cheek, and then I leaned over the bar and whispered, "Mr. Bartender, break a bottle of that Pommery." Ordinarily ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... being alone at first; his place was disputed. The first controls, if they themselves are to be believed, were the actress Mrs Siddons, the musician John Sebastian Bach, the poet Longfellow, Commodore Vanderbilt the multi-millionaire, and a young Italian girl named ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... imitation of foreign palaces, utterly unfit for private residences, which may possibly sometime be utilized for public purposes. They but illustrate the crazy ostentation of selfish wealth. Can it be possible, as stated by the St. Joseph Herald, that "George Vanderbilt is building a genuine old-fashioned mediaeval baronial castle at Asheville, N. C., at a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... lookin' for Vanderbilt or God Almighty up here, are you? Well, then, you hark to me, will you? You say to my old woman to give you supper and a shakedown somewhar to-night. Say I sent ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Ballymolloy, it may be that in a year's time these new-fangled ideas about free trade may be law, and it may be much cheaper for us to get our rails from England, as Mr. Vanderbilt did three or four years ago, when he was in such ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... and energy joining the thoughtless crowd that howls against trusts. Use your vote and your voice to put those trusts under government control as soon as may be. Be glad that an old Vanderbilt had brains enough to build great railroad systems. Don't denounce him or begrudge him the ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... burring motor he groaned, "Now I probably never will see her again. Except that she thinks I'm such a pest that I dassn't let her know I'm in the same state, I sure am one successful lover. As a Prince Charming I win the Vanderbilt Cup. I'm going ahead backwards so fast I'll probably drop off into the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... of success in business?" asked a friend of Cornelius Vanderbilt. "Secret! there is no secret about it," replied the commodore; "all you have to do is to attend to ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... buyin' a sooperannuated two-seat Rockaway buggy. To this he hooks up a span of ponies, loads in his squaws, an' p'rades 'round from Pawhusky to Greyhoss—the same bein' a couple of Osage camps—an' tharby redooces the enemy— what we'll name the 'Vanderbilt Injuns'—to desp'ration. The Astor savage shorely has the call with ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the son of the murdered man. "Meet me down at the Vanderbilt Hotel—ask for Mr. Hepburn's room, and send up the name of Williams. See you in an ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... had mastered a schoolboy's English, but seven years of public-school education was hardly a basis on which to build the work of a lifetime. He saw each day in his duties as office boy some of the foremost men of the time. It was the period of William H. Vanderbilt's ascendancy in Western Union control; and the railroad millionnaire and his companions, Hamilton McK. Twombly, James H. Banker, Samuel F. Barger, Alonzo B. Cornell, Augustus Schell, William Orton, were ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... to-day just as much as ever. I only hope that if we do manage to rake in that old field-glass case, and the paper is still nestling underneath the lining, it doesn't turn out to be a pipe dream—something that old miner just hatched up to make himself feel he was as rich as a Vanderbilt." ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... the tunnelway, but debouched on the street. Crossing Vanderbilt Avenue was a problem for village folk heavy laden. The taxicabs were ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... hours from Paris, though, with a little enterprise and a decent boat on the Channel, the trip could easily be made in 14 hours—four for the French side, six for the Channel, two for the English side and two for Custom-House delay and leeway of all kinds. If Commodore Vanderbilt or Mr. Newton would only take compassion on the ignorance and barbarism prevailing throughout Europe in the matter of steamboat-building, and establish a branch of his business on this side of the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of the New York Central, Western Union Telegraph, Lake Shore, and other corporations controlled by Vanderbilt and Jay Gould, which had fallen during the excitement of the previous ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... rolling again. By the bye, her first lady-in-waiting, the young Duchess del Monte of Naples, was an American girl, and a very pretty one, too. She enjoyed for some time the enviable distinction of being the youngest and handsomest duchess in Europe, until Miss Vanderbilt married Marlborough and took the record from her. The Prince and Princess of Naples live at their Neapolitan capital, and will not do much to help things in Rome. Besides which he is very delicate and passes for not being any too fond ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the brakes with the nose of the car projecting over a precipice a thousand yards deep. He knew perfectly well the precipice was there, but he leaped at it exactly as though it were the finish line of the Vanderbilt cup race. If his idea of amusing himself was to make me sick with terror he must have ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... Albany, N.Y.—the opening of this road was celebrated on the 24th of September, 1831—with its simple De Witt Clinton engine, was beside a locomotive of gigantic proportions, the fastest in the world. This stupendous piece of machinery constituted a portion of the Vanderbilt enterprise. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... threatened to sue Barley, and Barley—he was from Georgia—was seen buying a gun in town. But before that mama had dragged me North again, much against my will, so I never did find out all that happened—though I saw Barley once in the Vanderbilt lobby." ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Vanderbilt began the first Grand Central Station—depot, they called it, in the language of the day—he made one error of judgment. His choice of a site proved to be magnificently right, though he selected a spot that was practically open country, then technically known as 42nd St. The story goes—it ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... that I discovered the Vanderbilt claim in a snow-storm. It cropped out apparently a little southeast of a point where the arc of the orbit of Venus bisects the milky way, and ran due east eighty chains, three links and a swivel, thence south fifteen paces and a half to a blue spot in the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the afternoon of the day you and I parted, I spent the remainder of the evening until 8 o'clock in the city. At that hour we embarked for New York, and the boys had a very exciting and enthusiastic time on board the steamer Vanderbilt. Wednesday was spent at 648 Broadway, Regimental Headquarters of the "Harris Light Cavalry;" and on that night we came by train to our present camp: or, rather, as near it as we could, for it is two miles from the nearest station. The spot is picturesque enough to be described. An old farm, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... authorized a brief manual of the Elementary Principles of Agriculture to be "taught in the public schools of the State," for the benefit of white farmers again. The Professor of Chemistry in the Vanderbilt University, Nashville, prepared the book—107 pages. Where in all this is there anything for the educational improvement of the black laborer just where he needs education most? The labor of the South is subject in these years to a marvelous revolution. ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... the Daylight-Saving Law the New York Central has kept its clocks at what is called "Eastern Standard Time," meaning that it is standard on East 42d Street between Vanderbilt and Lexington Avenues. Practically everywhere else in New York the clocks are ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... is coming soon. One of the most active of our wealthy socialists has said: "If I had to be in 'the hundred year, step at a time, take-what-you-can-get' class, you would find me automobiling my life away down at Newport with Reggie Vanderbilt instead of editing this magazine.... As said, I would rather chase down the pike on my Red Dragon at 'steen hundred miles an hour, terrifying the farmers, than go in for any 'reform game'." (Gaylord Wilshire in Wilshire Editorials. ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... fortunate enough to attract the attention of Mrs. Grover Cleveland, who admired her talent, and, with Mr. George Vanderbilt, sent her abroad. For two years she studied in Paris, and then went to Berlin, where she became a pupil of Joachim. In Berlin she made her debut in 1896, with the Philharmonic Orchestra, which was conducted ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Thaw, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Company, writes: "This work is wholly good, both for the men and the roads which they serve." Mr. C. Vanderbilt, first vice-president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, writes: "Few things about railroad affairs afford more satisfactory returns than these reading-rooms." Mr. J.H. Devereux, of Cleveland, president of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... public condemned and crucified Christ; the public is behind every lynching. The public condemns and ostracizes a man, even though he has lived an upright life all his days, when some scalawag, for personal or financial reasons, assails him in a newspaper. When Commodore Vanderbilt gave utterance to the words, 'The public be damned,' he expressed the sentiment of four-fifths of those who have rubbed up against the public, as had the sturdy old man who acquired his estimate of human nature while rowing the public over the river. The public would ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Valentine Brown; He lived in a mansion just out of the town, A mansion spacious and grand; He was wealthy as Vanderbilt, Astor or Tome, Had money invested abroad and at home, And thousands of acres ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... about, how the sons of successful railway magnates, discarding wealth and luxuries, had determined to learn the business from the bottom up and fit themselves for future eminence in railway circles. The "young feller" must be a Gould or a Vanderbilt, a Ledyard, a Huntington, a son of somebody at the financial head of things. While sacrificing none of his steady self-reliance or self-respect, Ben Tillson decided to treat his new fireman, assistant to the old, with all due civility. He would cringe or kowtow to no one, but, like the ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... missionary sermon, which was delivered by Prof. Brown, of Vanderbilt University, upon "Paul the Missionary;" baccalaureate, by the Dean, whose theme was "Moses, the Leader of his People." To these were added three "graduating exercises." In the program were over thirty speakers—young ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... and down in Washington Place, in front of the residence of old Commodore Vanderbilt, Charles learned to ride. He kept his part of the contract, too, and delivered five dollars' worth of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... "If John D. Vanderbilt should come around courtin' Maud," he went on, after a moment, "I don't know as Sam would cal'late he was good enough for her. Anyhow he'd feel that 'twas her that was doin' the favor, not John D. . . . And I guess he'd be right; I don't know any Vanderbilts, but I've known Maud ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... adjourned without effecting a settlement, and the mail, which was far too heavy for the overland facilities to handle at that time, was piling up by the ton awaiting shipment. Matters were getting serious when Cornelius Vanderbilt came to the Government's relief and agreed to furnish steamer service until Congress assembled in March, 1861, provided the Federal authorities would assure him "a fair and adequate compensation." This agreement was ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... ourselves behind Him, put Him in our place, and ask what God will do for Him. He authorizes us to thus use His name, and the blessings bestowed are just to the extent that that name prevails with God. Should Vanderbilt grant you the legal right to use his name to the full extent of your desire in presentation of checks, etc.; with his pledge to redeem all paper bearing his signature in your hand, his whole fortune would be pledged to meet the demands of your drafts upon him. Bankrupt financially, ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... is a doctoral dissertation of Vanderbilt University. The author entered upon this study to show to what extent the southern people "sought to perpetuate, not slavery, but the same method of controlling the emancipated Negro which was in force under the slavery regime, the difficulties which were met with from ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... from London states that it has just become known in Budapest that Countess Szechenyi, formerly Miss Gladys Vanderbilt, contracted smallpox while nursing in a Budapest military hospital and has been dangerously ill for a fortnight; a hospital, exclusively for the care of wounded soldiers whose cases require delicate surgical operations, is ready for work ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... is founded by thrift. Most respectable workmen are capitalists to a greater or lesser extent. Every day workmen become capitalists. It should not be forgotten that many of the wealthiest men, such as Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Krupp, the first Rothschild, Sir Thomas Lipton, Passmore Edwards, and many others, have risen from the ranks and were working men—and every day capitalists lose their money and become workmen. Workmen may become capitalists by thrift. Co-operating workmen in ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Michigan won her share of games, interest and enthusiasm waned correspondingly, while the baseball and track teams suffered even more. Henceforth the principal opponents were Pennsylvania, Cornell, Syracuse, and for a time Vanderbilt. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... with cylindrical corrugated fire-box invented by Cornelius Vanderbilt, great-grandson of the founder of the New York Central, marks an important step in locomotive building. The cylindrical form largely obviates the necessity of an array of stay-bolts to prevent warping; the corrugated ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... year of earth he was invited to deliver at Vanderbilt University a series of lectures on poetry and literature. Before the invitation reached him he had "fallen into that perfect ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... masher, and from what I have seen of men being bossed around with one wife, I don't envy Solomon his thousand. Why, just imagine that gang of wives going and ordering fall bonnets. Solomon would have to be a king, or a Vanderbilt to stand it. Ma wears five dollar silk stockings, and Pa kicks awfully when the bill comes in. Imagine Soloman putting up for a few thousand pair of silk stockings. I am glad you will sit down and reason with me in a rational way about some of these Bible stories that take ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... built by Frederick the Great in 1769, during the Seven Years' War, at a cost of nearly half a million sterling—and gaze with interest at the summer residence of the Emperor. If he is an American he may think of his multi-millionaire fellow-citizen, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, when driving up to call on his erstwhile imperial schoolfellow and friend, was nearly shot at by a sentry for whom the name Vanderbilt was no "Open Sesame." He will see before him a main building, seven hundred feet in length, three stories high, with the central portion ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the overshadowing fortunes to develop from the ownership and manipulation of railroads was that of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Havemeyers and other factory owners, whose descendants are now enrolled among the conspicuous multimillionaires, were still in the embryonic stages when Vanderbilt towered aloft in a class by himself ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the Hudson Tubes were opened not quite a decade and a half ago Mr. McAdoo inaugurated what was at that time an almost revolutionary policy. He took the motto, "The Public be Pleased," instead of the one made famous by Mr. Vanderbilt, and posted it all about, had pamphlets distributed, and made a speech on courtesy in railroad management and elsewhere. Since that time, not altogether because of the precedent which had been established, ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... want the chauffeur to have all his juice on—the engine cranked and ready for another Vanderbilt Cup Race." Bobbie gave the waiter one of his best smiles—behind that smile was a manful look, a kindliness of character and a great power of purpose, which rang true, even to this blase and cynical dispenser of the grape. The latter nodded and smiled, albeit flabbily, into the winsome ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... friends, he abandoned his prosperous business and took command of one of the first steamboats launched, at a salary of one thousand dollars a year. Livingston and Fulton had acquired the sole right to navigate New York waters by steam, but Vanderbilt thought the law unconstitutional, and defied it until it was repealed. He soon became a steamboat owner. When the government was paying a large subsidy for carrying the European mails, he offered to carry them free and give better service. His offer was accepted, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of the Cunarder's destruction were some of the best known personages of the Western Hemisphere. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, multimillionaire; Charles Frohman, noted theatrical manager; Charles Klein, dramatist, who wrote "The Lion and the Mouse;" Justus Miles Forman, author, and Elbert Hubbard, known as Fra Elbertus, widely ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... few preliminary jack-rabbit jumps she begun to get headway, and the next I knew our driver was leanin' over his wheel like he was after the Vanderbilt Cup. He must have been throwin' all his weight on the juice button and slippin' his clutch judicious, for we sure was breezin' some. Inside of two blocks we'd eaten up half the lead and was tearin' uptown like a ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... can see cases in which the reward received is manifestly out of all proportion to the benefit conferred. Consider the fortunes which have been accumulated by some of our Midases of the present decade. It is quite certain that the benefits which Cornelius Vanderbilt, for instance, conferred on the community by his enterprise and business sagacity, by his work in opening new fields of industry, forming new channels for commerce, etc., were so valuable that he honestly earned the right to enjoy a large fortune. It is equally certain that a great part of his ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... to smile, but her lips quivered. A whole crown-piece, and a new one into the bargain! A Vanderbilt deprived of his millions could not have felt his poverty more bitterly than she did at ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Vanderbilt is reported to have said, "I have over a dozen sons, and not one is worth a damn." I fear me that every father with sons grown to manhood has at some time voiced the same sentiment, curtailed, possibly, only as to numbers, and softened by another expletive, which does not mitigate the anguish ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... One after another of the public halls has been closed to me during the past year. But to-day is to be our first public rally of the delegates of the Wahoo Valley Trades Council. We have rented office rooms in the second floor of the Vanderbilt House in South Harvey, and are coming out openly as an established labor organization, ready for business in the Valley, and we are going to have a big meeting—somewhere—I don't know where now, but somewhere—" his face turned grim and a fanatic flame ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White |
