Ellis Parker Butler

“ It has been bad for me, and bad for my success as an author, and bad for my success in the only life I have to live, but it is apt to be much worse for you to gather goat-feathers than for me to gather them, because I can, occasionally, weave some of them into a story, while you can't do anything at all with those you acquire.
The time we waste in excursions off the main line of our road to our goal is the difference between success and half-success; often it is the difference between success and failure. ”

“ If you stop a moment and think of the men you know who are not successes, but who might be successes, you will find they are goat-feather gatherers. Anything that leads a man aside from the straight path to his goal is a goat-feather. Every useless side line is a goat-feather. Every unnecessary distraction is a goat-feather. Nine tenths of the things I do are goat-feathers. ”

“ I think I can claim, without fear of dispute, to have gathered more goat-feathers in a fifty-year career, and to look more like a goat, than any other man living, and not excepting Pooh Bah, who added such a pleasing, goat-like character to Gilbert-and-Sullivan's "Mikado." ”

“ What I marvel at is that I make a living at all. My telephone rings seven thousand eight hundred and six times a day, and only once in the last eight years has it been rung by any one who wanted to buy a story from me. The other eighty-two million times it was rung by people who wanted me to gather a new crop of goat-feathers. ”

“ So far as I am concerned, the most important person in the world is myself. The most important success in the world is my success. The most important money in the world is my money. A whole lot of the most important debts in the world are my debts. The same is true of you and your success and your money and your debts.
I hope you are not near fifty years old. I hope you are nearer twenty, but whatever your age I can tell you that chasing after goat-feathers is mighty poor business. ”

“ Goat-feathers are the distractions, side lines and deflections that take a man's attention from his own business and keep him from getting ahead. They are the Greatest Thing in the World—to make a man look like a goat. ”

“ A man may make a success of a Flushing Public Playground and not be making a success of himself. He may be making a goat of himself. The chances are ten to one that he is making a goat of himself.
I'll never get the Pulitzer prize for the best novel or for the best play, but if there was a Pulitzer prize for the greatest human goat nobody else would be in the running. I have not got goat-feathers by the dozen or by the pound—I have them by the bale. I estimate that if all my goat-feathers were placed end to end they would reach from the bread line to the poor-house. ”

“ Before I have got to the first period in the first sentence I may have decided that I would not have a man fall off the bridge but have a woman fall off it, that I would not have her fall off a bridge but off the Woolworth Building, that I would not have her fall into a kettle of tar but into a wagonload of feather beds, that I would not have her fall at all, that I would not write a humorous story at all, that I would not write at all, and that I would, instead, get an empty cigar box and make a toy circus wagon for my young son. ”

“ It is surprising how often editors have had to announce "A story that shows this famous humorist in an entirely new vein."
Taking literature as a business, I can say that a humorist should have no "new vein." Neither does a plumber succeed as a plumber by spending a large share of his working hours making violins. ”

“ Goat-feathers, you understand, are the feathers a man picks and sticks all over his hide to make himself look like the village goat. It often takes six days, three hours and eighteen minutes to gather one goat-feather, and when a man has it and takes it home it is about as useful and valuable to him as a stone-bruise on the back of his neck. ”

“ If I am ever the boss of a school board I shall insist that no child graduate until he can foot correctly a pile of numbers four deep and forty high, and do it the first time. I have been a bookkeeper in my day, and I have footed a column of figures twenty times and got ten different results. ”

“ Distraction isn't really good for a man if he wants to reach a goal. No salesman ever got very far by carrying too many side lines. The poorest sort of monopoly for any man to undertake is a monopoly of goat-feathers.
No man in the world had a better chance to make himself the Great American Humorist than I had when I wrote "Pigs is Pigs." I had a good, solid foundation of fairly good humorous work under it and the little story had a wonderful success. ”

“ The reason children don't get their examples right in school is because they don't concentrate on the matter in hand, and the reason men don't get their lives right is because they don't concentrate on the matter of making good at what they know is the business of their lives—success. ”

“ Seven farmers, a school-teacher and a tin peddler may line up along the fence and applaud her all afternoon until she is swelled with pride, but when she gets back to the barn at sundown she will not give much milk. ”

“ The time to investigate interesting by-paths is when you are on a vacation, but the New York-Chicago Express gets there by staying on the track. The minute it starts climbing some interesting country lane after daisies and buttercups the coroners begin to gather and the claim agents flock together, and some slow but sure old freight train, plugging along on the next track but sticking to it, toots a couple of times and passes by. ”

“ Night may come without my having to do any real work, but if not I can avoid it and accumulate a few more goat-feathers as Member of the Book Committee and Executive Committee of the Queensboro Public Library, Member of the Queensboro Committee on Training Camp Activities, Executive Committeeman of the Vigilantes, Authors' Committeeman of the American Defense Society, and so on for hours and hours and hours. ”

“ The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO
REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM Goat-Feathers GOAT-FEATHERS
No human being ever tells the whole truth about himself. ”