Office

“ I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. His office is a reception of the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences. ”

“ They lurk in every Gov'ment lair,
⁠'Mid docket dull and dusty file,
Solemnly squat in an easy chair,
Penning a minute of rare hot air
⁠⁠In departmental style.
In every office, on every floor
⁠Are Swanks, and Swanks, distracting Swanks,
⁠⁠And Acting-Swanks a score. ”

“ Judged by the aggregate amount of work done, the last year has been the greatest in the history of the office. I believe that the organization of the office is efficient and that the work has been done with fidelity. ”

“ Up there in the big office-rooms, year in year out, these refined, well-educated women kept ledgers and accounts and did the general office work of the Civil Service with a precision and neatness and correctness equal to the work of any men, and invariably to the astonishment of any interested visitor who was permitted to inquire into the system. ”

“ It is the duties of the office, not a run of infirmities peculiar to the incumbents of office, that make the outcome. Very much like that of the medicine-man, the office is one which will not abide a tolerant and ingenuous incumbent. ”

“ In the scheme of our national Government the Presidency is preëminently the people’s office. ”

“ The office of the Executive falls into my hands at a peculiar period in our history as a State. Contemplating alone the vastness of its extent, the diversified interests of its people, and the character of its resources, yet undeveloped, there is enough to demand continued labor and attention, in order to apply the benefits of government with sound discretion, and a proper regard to the relative demands of each interest ”

“ I propose to make a beginning by putting two capable men and a boy in an office, with instructions to cut out, preserve, and verify all contemporary records in the daily and weekly press that have a bearing upon any branch of our departments. ”

“ The rest of their visible office consists, in the honour of attending parliaments and councils, and bestowing preferments in their own gifts; in which last employment, and in their spiritual and temporal courts, the labour falls to their vicars general, secretaries, proctors, apparitors, seneschals, and the like. ”

“ It was there said that 'an office is a public station or employment conferred by the appointment of government. The term embraces the ideas of tenure, duration, emolument, and duties. . . . A government office is different from a government contract. ”

“ The most usual source of office-holding is the humble work of the clerk, handyman or messenger, responsible for carrying out the nagging routine of government. Beyond this common labor of public service are public servants skilled in their several professions. Beyond and above them are department heads and still higher are the appointed or elected officials responsible for the success or failure of a given public policy. ”

“ The office, unfortunately, is regarded as one of great dignity, and puts the holder on a level with the highest society, and compels him to associate on equal terms with men who spend more than my whole income on the mere entertainments and other trimmings and embroidery of their lives. ”

“ The title is not the question, but it’s the office, which is known to the laws and to the people. They know their duty to a king and his to them. Whatever else there is will be wholly new, and upon the next occasion will be changed again. ”

“ These men (the men who dispense the offices) soon come to assume an enormous importance in the minds of office-seekers. They watch all the movements of the political leaders with the greatest anxiety, and study every chance word that they let drop, as if it had some dark and awful significance. ”

“ Considers all factors entering into office organization and management, with special emphasis on the human element. Chapters are devoted to office lay-out, selection and training of employees, rules and regulations, discipline, promotions, encouragement of savings, pension systems, discipline, welfare work, mechanical equipment of offices, records, mailing department, etc. ”

“ The office is one of great honour as well as power, and has generally been conferred upon some individual distinguished by an influential position in society; so that his rank and character might reflect credit upon the craft. ”

“ The office of the eye is to see, the office of the hand is to work, &c. So in the mystical body, some are qualified for, and called to, one sort of work; others are, in like manner, fitted for, and called to, another sort of work. Magistrates, ministers, people, in a Christian commonwealth, have their several offices, and must not intrude one upon another, nor clash in the discharge of their several offices. ”

“ The exercise of intrigue and backstair influence being a bar to office, the offices of government are filled with the most intelligent, upright, and valuable men in the country, selected with the sole view of promoting the best interests of the nation. ”

“ In the first place, it is to be remembered that patronage acts, not only on those who actually possess office, but on those also who expect it, or hope for it; and in the next place, office-holders, by their very situation, their public station, their connection with the business of individuals, their activity, their ability to help or to hurt according to their pleasure, their acquaintance with public affairs, and their zeal and devotion, exercise a degree of influence out of all proportion to their numbers. ”

“ In every contact with authority, with their employer, with the police, with the School Board officer, in the hospital, or in the workhouse, they have equally the occasion to appreciate the light-hearted civility of the man in office ”

“ When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. ”

“ If you wanted to learn it you had to go not only to the Paymaster General's office and make an inquiry there, but you had to go from one office to another in order to pick up your information by little items. ”

“ It has found its way into the pulpit, into the monastery, into the cloister, and into every department of life. No man seems to desire an office, or is called upon to fulfil an office for the public good, but the first thing to be considered is, What will it pay? ”

“ Now, if I can make it appear that ye ministerial office is an employment in its nature ye most honorable and in its effects ye most beneficial to mankind, I hope your objections will immediately vanish—that you will keep me no longer in suspense and misery, but consummate my happiness. ”

“ Office is an ordained and essential feature of every government. It represents various duties imposed and commanded by sovereign authority. It may have reference to the duties enjoined upon a society collectively, in the service of others. ”

“ The office is perhaps a somewhat peculiar as well as delicate one, and for the relief of any of the weaker brethren who may find in this a singular outlet for monastic energy, and it may be even stumble thereat, I may perhaps explain a little further the circumstances out of which such a state of things have arisen. The problem is in reality a simple one. ”

“ The young and ambitious are offered the dazzling prospect of office. The possession of any post in the Administration, even the humblest, carries with it a seat on the Treasury Bench, side by side with eminent statesmen whose names are household words. ”

“ All these offices, which require no special capability, which any average man could fill if he once got the chance, which must have been the positions referred to in the saying that when God gives a man an office He gives him sense to fill it, that is, the positions of officers, diplomates, beneficiaries, court dignitaries, etc., are all filled by members of the aristocracy. ”

“ The duties of all public offices are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance; and I can not but believe that more is lost by the long continuance of men in office than is generally to be gained by their experience. ”

“ In fact, on bestowing an office it is the function which delegates; the proper execution of the function is the prime motive in determining his choice; the candidate appointed is always the one who will best do the work assigned him. ”

“ The establishment of officers and non-commissioned officers will be fixed by me, and recorded in the books of this office, and in order that I may be enabled to determine the proportion, you will be pleased to specify the precise number of private men which you will recommend, and into how many companies you propose to divide them. ”

“ The increased industry of the Office, the improvement resulting from a thoughtful and careful performance of its duties, and the elevation of the standard which all seeking appointments must come up to, and a careful weeding-out of the inefficient ones, are rapidly tending to secure commendation from those having business with the Bureau, rather than censure. ”

“ Of course, our paper has not been contrary; but we have noticed a good many times—every one in the office has noticed it, the boys and girls in the back-office, and the boys and girls in the front-office—that whenever we take a stand for anything, say for closing the stores at six o'clock, the General swings the Statesman into line against it. If he has done it once he has done it fifty times in the last ten years ”

“ Another is that there is one feature in the tenure of office law which, although obnoxious in its connection with the present system of appointments, will be of value connected with the reforms proposed. ”

“ My competitors for advancement were numerous, and more versed in the ways of the world than I. Like them, I was obliged to begin by paying a most assiduous attention to men in office. Having once gained the privilege of being seated in the mejlis (assembly) of the head of the law, who was in fact my chief, I little by little became noticed by the grand vizier, the lord high treasurer, the secretary of state, the chief executioner, and others. ”

“ Bound by invisible threads to more than four thousand secondary organs:—the post offices, which plunge directly into the torrent of the exchanges,—the Central Office records each day with extraordinary precision the minutest changes that the ever increasing number of its adherents accomplish in the social movement of wealth. ”

“ Officials are to be appointed by a complex plan of competitive examination; and they are to be invited to send in tenders for doing the work at diminished salary. When once in office, every care is taken for their continual inspection by the public and the verification of their accounts. They are never for an instant to forget that they are servants, not the masters, of the public. ”

“ I cannot hope, of course, to give a post office to everybody. I have endeavored in the selection of those who are to administer the functions of public office for the general Government to secure good men. ”

“ But in a Government office, as certainly as in a law-court or a laboratory, effective thinking will not be done unless adequate opportunities and motives are secured by organisation during the whole working life of the appointed officials. ”

“ Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—HOW NOT TO DO IT.
Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; ”

“ A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent. ”

“ Vholes’s office, in disposition retiring and in situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. ”

“ We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight. ”

“ When the office of chief was offered to him, the big man, who looked every inch a chief, instead of accepting the position at once, became deeply affected, and seemed utterly unable to make any suitable reply. ”

“ Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted. ”

“ Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government; ”