Businesslike Quotes & Sayings

She sounded fond. Usually she was carefully polite or businesslike. She had never been fond before. — Cassandra Clare

How you carry yourself speaks volumes about how you feel about yourself. — Cindy Ann Peterson

Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike. — Benjamin Graham

The noise of the herd is tornadic, locomotival. The expression on the hamsters' whiskered faces is businesslike and implacable-it's that implacable-herd expression. — David Foster Wallace

Alas, a great many people play at praying; it is nothing better. I say they play at praying; they do not expect God to give them an answer, and thus they are mere triflers who mock the Lord. He who prays in a businesslike way, meaning what he says, honors the Lord. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The players wanted more money, higher salary caps and they didn't have that family relationship we felt with the players. Mentally, the players were more businesslike. — Guy Lafleur

It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear. — Upton Sinclair

She sounded so bright and businesslike that I wondered if I had hallucinated the part where she basically told us we were all going to die. — Rachel Hawkins

Most men, if you just tell them what to do in a businesslike fashion, will follow directions without thinking about it. One proceeds on the assumption that they'll do as they're told, and they do. — Lynne Reid Banks

One must be businesslike, although the glass is falling. — Vita Sackville-West

What car are we taking?" she says all businesslike. "I thought you didn't want to." She snatched the coffee from my hand and looks at me over the rim. "Of course I want to, but I would look like a bad person if I didn't object at all." I shrug. I stopped trying to soothe my conscience years ago, but to each his own. — Tarryn Fisher

I liked Truman very much. He was precise and businesslike. After a while, it was his turn. — Lord Mountbatten

I don't know what it is on an elemental level, but a beard in general evokes hedonism. It's a more lush personal grooming style. It's more comfortable and cozy; it's less sharp and angular and businesslike. I feel like a beard is more Hobbit-like, even though Hobbits themselves are clean-shaven. — Nick Offerman

A gathering of Democrats is more sweaty, disorderly, offhand, and rowdy than a gathering of Republicans; it is also likely to be more cheerful, imaginative, tolerant of dissent, and skillful at the game of give-and-take. A gathering of Republicans is more respectable, sober, purposeful, and businesslike than a gathering of Democrats; it is also likely to be more self-righteous, pompous, cut-and-dried, and just plain boring. — Clinton Rossiter

You mean the Prophet won't print it because Fudge won't let them," said Hermione irritably.
Rita gave Hermione a long, hard look. Then, leaning forward across the table toward her, she said in a businesslike tone, "All right, Fudge is leaning on the Prophet, but it comes to the same thing. They won't print a story that shows Harry in a good light. Nobody wants to read it. It's against the public mood. This last Azkaban breakout has got people quite worried enough. People just don't want to believe You-Know-Who's back."
"So the Daily Prophet exists to tell people what they want to hear, does it?" said Hermione scathingly.
Rita sat up straight again, her eyebrows raised, and drained her glass of firewhisky.
"The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl," she said coldly. — J.K. Rowling

Did he seem crazy?"
Captain Geechy seemed perplexed. "No. He was quite calm and businesslike, actually. Why do you ask?"
"I ask because his plan to get rich involves hijacking a starship full of dead people," she said. "That seems like the act of someone who isn't in their right mind. It concerns me that someone not in their right mind is holding me hostage. — Michael Prelee

Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt. — George Bernard Shaw

Just as some people enjoy knitting in front of the television, Mrs. Bennet was fond of perusing housewares catalogs; indeed, the sound of pages turning, that quick flap when no item caught her eye and the pauses when something did, the occasional businesslike lick of the index finger, was one of the essential sounds of Liz's childhood. This habit was also, apparently, what allowed Mrs. Bennet to maintain a belief that she had not actually "watched" a wide variety of shows even though she had been in the room for the duration of entire episodes and, in some cases, entire seasons. They — Curtis Sittenfeld

Conquer your customer as you would a woman — Bangambiki Habyarimana

reality, a businesslike approach to charity has been dominant within large-scale organized philanthropy for at least 120 years, ever since industrialists such as Carnegie and Rockefeller vowed to apply business techniques to the realm of philanthropy. — Linsey McGoey

Our official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in that of courage. Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to push past him, but Gregson had firmly elbowed him back. London dangers were the privilege of the London force. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I've always enjoyed baseball, but even when I was a kid I can remember viewing it with a businesslike approach. — Lance Berkman

He was one of those quite rare adults who communicate with small children fairly well and who love them all impartially
not in a sugary way but in a businesslike fashion that may sometimes entail a hug, in the same way that closing a big business deal may call for a handshake. — Stephen King

Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of. — Robert Frost

Esmerine go out briefly to relieve herself, then return and pull off her shift again, her breasts silvery raindrops spilling down her ribs in the moonlight, over Bahram's hands as he warmed them, in that somnolent world of second-watch sex that was one of the beautiful spaces of daily life, the salvation of sleep, the body's dream, so much warmer and more loving than any other part of the day that it was sometimes hard in the mornings to believe it had really happened, that he and Esmerine, so severe in dress and manner, Esmerine who ran the women at their work as hard as Khalid had at his most tryrannical, and who never spoke to Bahram or looked at him except in the most businesslike way, as was only fitting and proper, had in fact been transported together with him to whole other worlds of rapture, in the depths of the night in their bed. As he watched her work in the afternoons, Bahram thought: love changed everything. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I don't run outside, honestly. Sometimes I go out around my house, but mainly it's the stupid treadmill. I wish I had a better answer, but I'm very businesslike about my runs. — Drew Carey

She had abruptly flipped from the southern belle and was now putting on the extremely businesslike air of those perfectionist women who'd only worked in the professional world for two or three years before stopping to have children and were now terrified of not being taken seriously. — Rebecca Makkai

If we speak calmly, in a businesslike fashion, let me draw your attention to the fact that Russia supplies arms to the legitimate government of Syria in full compliance with the norms of international law. We are not breaching any rules and norms. — Vladimir Putin

I work in my pajamas most of the time. No matter what you're wearing, you can sound businesslike on the phone. — Juliet Blackwell

The typical American citizen is the business man. The typical business man is a bad citizen; he is busy. If he is a 'big business man' and very busy, he does not neglect; he is busy with politics, oh, very busy and very businesslike. — Lincoln Steffens

Tocqueville saw that the life of constant action and decision which was entailed by the democratic and businesslike character of American life put a premium upon rough and ready habits of mind, quick decision, and the prompt seizure of opportunities - and that all this activity was not propitious for deliberation, elaboration, or precision in thought. — Richard Hofstadter

I was right when I said a very long time ago that our age would leave few living documents behind it: it was rare for anyone to keep a diary, letters were short and businesslike--"I'm alive and well"--and few memoirs were written. There are many reasons for this. Let me mention just one, not perhaps recognized by everybody: we were too often at loggerheads with our own past to give it proper thought. Within the half-century, our ideas on people and events have changed many times; conversations were broken off in mid-sentence; thoughts and feelings could not but be affected by circumstances. — Ilya Ehrenburg

I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains. — Agatha Christie

Here I am, struggling to banish any foolish imagined affections for you so that I can consummate this marriage of convenience in a proper businesslike fashion, as we agreed. And then you go and read a book?
While he was at it, why didn't he just bring her a basket of kittens, a bottle of champagne, and pose naked with a rose caught between his teeth?
-Maddie — Tessa Dare

I tend to think shorts are too casual That's just not businesslike. — Dale Carnegie

Life with a man is more businesslike after it, and money matters work better. And then, you see, if you have rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the law to protect you, which you can't otherwise, unless he half-runs you through with a knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And if he bolts away from you
I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for there's never any knowing what a man med do
you'll have the sticks o' furniture, and won't be looked upon as a thief. — Thomas Hardy

Dentists seem to me very orderly, businesslike people who appear to become somewhat bored with the routine of their work after a period of time. Perhaps I'm wrong. — Paul Theroux

I expected a dozen people packed into our cabin again but it's only her and Ben, the guy with the buzz cut and black glasses who looks like a young astronaut. Clean-cut and stupendously brilliant.

Cordero's not too far off. She's businesslike in her dark suit, but there's also a military assuredness to her actions. I get the feeling that when a situation takes a nosedive she knows where the emergency exits are and how to deploy the water slide. — Veronica Rossi

He's tall with broad shoulders, the kind I'd like to run my hands across and glide down his strong arms. His dark hair is unruly in contrast to his businesslike attire ... — Georgia Cates