How to analyze people on sight

Here are my notes from book How to analyze people on sight:

• It's not how much you know but what you can DO that counts.
• The most essential thing in the world to any individual is to understand himself. The next is to understand the other fellow. For life is largely a problem of running your own car as it was built to be run, plus getting along with the other drivers on the highway.
• The game is the same old game--you must adjust and adapt yourself to your environment or it will destroy you.
• Adapt or Die - Who will win? Nature answers for you. She has said with awful and inexorable finality that, whether you are a blade of grass on the Nevada desert or a man in the streets of London, you can win only as you adapt yourself to your environment.
• The moving picture industry--said to be the third largest in the world--is based largely on this interrelation. This industry would become extinct if something were to happen to sever the connection between external expressions and the internal nature of men and women.
• The size, shape and structure of a man's body tell more important facts about his real self--what he thinks and what he does--than the average mother ever knows about her own child.
• Five Biological Types - Human Analysis differs from every other system of character analysis in that it classifies man, for the first time, into five types according to his biological evolution. It deals with man in the light of the most recent scientific discoveries. It estimates each individual according to his "human" qualities rather than his "character" or so-called "moral" qualities. In other words, it takes his measure as a human being and determines from his externals his chances for success in the world of today.
• ...bring to mind any intimate friends, or even that husband or wife, and note how few changes they have made in their way of doing things in twenty years!
• Every human being is born with preferences and predilections which manifest themselves from earliest childhood to death. These inborn tendencies are never obliterated and seldom controlled to any great extent, and then only by individuals who have learned the power of the mind over the body. Inasmuch as this knowledge is possessed by only a few, most of the people of the earth are blindly following the dictates of their inborn leanings.
• Succeed at What We Like - No person achieves success or happiness when compelled to do what he naturally dislikes to do. Since these likes and dislikes stay with him to the grave, one of the biggest modern problems is that of helping men and women to discover and to capitalize their inborn traits.
• Furthermore just as a Ford never changes into a Pierce nor a Pierce into a Ford, a human being never changes his type. He may modify it, train it, polish it or control it somewhat, but he will never change it.
• The world classifies human beings according to their superficialities. To the world a human motorcycle can pass for a Rolls-Royce any day if sufficiently camouflaged with diamonds, curls, French heels and plucked eyebrows.
• In the same manner many a bicycle in human form gets elected to Congress because he plays his machinery for all it is worth and gets a hundred per cent service out of it. Every such person learned early in life what kind of car he was and capitalized its natural tendencies.
• The most man can do for his neighbor is to understand and inspire him. The most he can do for himself is to understand and organize his inborn capacities.
• the nutritive, circulatory, muscular, bony or nervous
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• When he takes the trouble to think about it there are a few kinds of people the Alimentive does not care for. The man who is bent on discussing the problems of the universe, the highbrow who wants to practise his new relativity lecture on him, the theorist who is given to lengthy expatiations, and all advocates of new isms and ologies are avoided by the pure Alimentive. He calls them faddists, fanatics and fools.
• But Nature must have intended fat people to manage the rest of us instead of taking a hand at the "heavy work." She made them averse to toil and then made them so likable that they can usually get the rest of us to do their hardest work for them.
• They fail to recognize that the world always pays the big salaries not for hand work but for head work, and not so much for working yourself as for your ability to get others to work.
• ...and he knows that quarrels are expensive, not alone in the chances they lose him, but in nerve force and peace of mind.
• This personal element will be found to dominate the activities, conversation and interests of the Alimentive. For him to like a thing or buy a thing it must come pretty near being something he can eat, wear, live in or otherwise personally enjoy. He confines himself to the concrete and tangible. But most of all he confines himself to things out of which he gets something for himself.
• ... the fat man is built around his stomach--and stomachs do not read!
• Gaining his ends by flattery, cajolery, and various more or less innocent little deceptions are the only social handicaps of this type.
• One average-minded fat man near the door of a business establishment will make more customers in a month by his geniality, joviality and sociableness than a dozen brilliant thinkers will in a year. Every business that deals directly with the public should have at least one fat person in it.
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• You can always tell what any individual WANTS MOST by what he DOES. The man who thinks he wants a thing or wishes he wanted it talks about getting it, envies those who have it and plans to start doing something about it. But the man who really WANTS a thing GOES AFTER it, sacrifices his leisure, his pleasures and sometimes love itself--and GETS it.
• To be able to put one's self in the role of another, to feel as he feels; to be so keenly sensitive to his situation and psychology that one almost becomes that person for the time being, is the heart and soul of acting.
• We are prone to judge every one by ourselves.
• The man who makes but one mistake a year because he makes but two decisions is wrong fifty per cent of the time.
• An aim, a definite goal is essential to the progress of any individual. It should be made with care and in keeping with one's personality, talents, training, education, environment and experience, and having been made should be adhered to with the determination which does not permit little things to interfere with it.
• The big problem of individual success is the problem of eliminating non-essentials--of "hewing to the line, letting the chips fall where they may." Most of the things that steal your time, strength, money and energy are nothing but chips. If you pay too much attention to them you will never hew out anything worth while.
• We do not like anything we do not understand and we seldom understand anything that differs decidedly from ourselves.
• He wants his house to be elegant, the grounds "different," the view unusual.
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• Morality is mostly a matter of how much temptation you can withstand.
• The most that training can do is to brace up the weak spots in us; to cultivate the strong ones; to teach us to avoid inimical environments; and to constantly remind us of the penalties we pay whenever we digress.
• Work palls on the Alimentive and monotony on the Thoracic, but leisure is what palls on the Muscular.
• We tell others to do certain things because "it will do you good" but the real reason usually is that we like to do it ourselves.
• All emotions powerfully affect muscles. A sad thought flits through your mind and instantly the muscles of your face droop and the corners of your mouth go down. Hundreds of similar illustrations with which you are already familiar serve to prove how close is the connection between emotions and muscles. The heart itself is nothing more nor less than a large, tough, leather-like muscle.
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• Externals are not accidental; they always correspond to the internal nature in every form of life.
• If you desire to know at once what kind of person the Osseous is, put the Alimentive and Thoracic types together and mix them thoroughly. The Osseous is the opposite of that mixture.
• Everything in one of Nature's creatures matches the other parts. Agassiz, the great naturalist, when given the scale of a fish could reconstruct for you the complete organism of the type of fish from which it came. Give a tree-leaf to a botanist and he will reconstruct the size, shape, structure and color of the tree back of it. He will describe to you its native environment and its functions; what its bark, blossoms and branches look like and what to do to make it grow.
• The typical New England housewife, who washes on Mondays, irons on Tuesdays and bakes on Saturdays for forty years, is a direct descendant of the Puritans, most of whom belong to this bony, pioneering type.
• The Alimentive avoids those he does not like and forgets them because it is too much bother to hate; the Thoracic flames up one moment and forgives the next; the Muscular takes it out in a fight then and there, or argues with you about it. But the Osseous despises, hates and loathes--and keeps on for years after every one else has forgotten all about it.
• The pure Alimentive seldom troubles his head about causes. The Thoracic is the type that lives chiefly for the pleasure of the moment and the adventures of life. The Muscular fights hard and works hard for various movements. But it is the Osseous who dies for his beliefs.
• There is little to be done with the Osseous when you meet him socially except to let him do what he wants to do. Don't interfere with him if you want him to like you.
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• Mind and matter are so inseparably bound up together in man's organism that it is impossible to say just where mind ends and matter begins.
• We are so constructed that brain and stomach--each of which demands an extra supply of blood when performing its work--can not function with maximum efficiency simultaneously.
• The Alimentive lives to eat, the Thoracic to feel, the Muscular to act, the Osseous to stabilize, but the Cerebral lives to meditate.
• But the man who can only dream lives in a very hostile world. His real world is his thoughts but whenever he steps out of them into human society he feels a stranger and he is one.
• Ideas always have to go begging at first, and the greater the idea the rougher the sledding.
• The ideal combination is a dreamer who can DO or a doer who knows the power of a DREAM. Thinking and acting--almost every individual is doing too much of one and too little of the other!
• He is too abstract to add to the gaiety of social gatherings, for these are based on the enjoyment of the concrete.
• Another reason why he has few friends is because these people, being in the great minority, are not easy to find.
• Since we get only what we go after in this world, it follows that the Cerebral is often poor. To make money one must want money. Competition for it is so keen that only those who want it badly and work with efficiency ever get very much of it.
• As we have seen, all the other types have decided preferences as to their clothes--the Alimentive demands comfort, the Thoracic style, the Muscular durability and the Osseous sameness--but the extreme Cerebral type says "anything will do."
• We have always said people were "absent-minded" when their minds were absent from what they were doing. This often applies to the Cerebral for he is capable of greater concentration than other types; also he is so frequently compelled to do things in which he has no interest that his mind naturally wanders to the things he cares about.
• The poor talker sometimes surprises us by being a good writer. Such a one is usually of the Cerebral type.
• ...and when society idlers will not be considered better than people who earn their livings.
• The world is managed by fat men, entertained by florid men, built by muscular men, opposed by bony men, but is improved in the final analysis by its thinking men.
• Fame is the food of the tomb.
• In the room of the Alimentive you will find cushions, sofas and "eats;" in that of the Thoracic you will find colorful, unusual things; the Muscular will have durable, solid, plain things; the Osseous will have fewer of everything but what he does have will be in order. But the pure Cerebral's furnishings--if he is responsible for them--will be an indifferent array, with no two pieces matching. Furthermore, everything will be piled with newspapers, magazines, books and clippings.
• The type PREDOMINATING in a person determines WHAT he does throughout his life--the NATURE of his main activities. The type which comes second in development will determine the WAY he does things--the METHODS he will follow in doing what his predominant type signifies.
• Human happiness is attained only through doing what the organism was built to do, in an environment that is favorable.
• Every individual owes it to himself to find the right work and the right mate, because these are fundamental needs of every human being. Lacking them, life is a failure; possessing but one of them, life is half a failure.
• Accordingly, just as it is easier to change the frosting on a cake than to change the inside, it is easier to change a man's religion than to change his activities.
• In other words, more than seventy per cent of American divorces are granted because husbands and wives can not adapt themselves to each other in the matter of how they shall spend their LEISURE hours.
• The only time we are free to act is during our leisure hours. All other hours are mortgaged to earning a living--in the accomplishment of which we often have very little outlet for natural trends. So it is only "after hours" and "over Sundays" that the masses of mankind have an opportunity to express their real natures.
• Law of Marital Happiness - Marriage should take place only between those whose first type-elements are sufficiently similar for them to enjoy the same general diversions, yet whose second type-elements are sufficiently dissimilar to make each strong where the other is weak.
• The human ego is so constituted that we tend to like all interesting people who do not offer us opposition.
• The business man has enough of "brilliant" people all day. When he gets home he is rather inclined to be merely the "tired business man," and in that state nothing is more agreeable than a wife with a smile.
• Feminine prettiness (not beauty) consists of the rose-bud mouth, the baby eyes, the cute little nose, the round cheeks, the dimpled chin, etc.--all more or less monopolized by the Alimentive type.
• Sales people everywhere say, "We like to see a fat woman coming, for she usually has money, spends it freely and is easy to please."
• For this type of woman, unlike the home-keeping Alimentive, enjoys being a widow and remains one. She usually has many chances to remarry but her changeable, gaiety-loving nature revels in the freedom, sophistication and distinction of widowhood. The appearance of endless youth given by her alive, responsive personality deceives the most discerning as to her age. The woman of f ifty who enthralls the youths of twenty-five is usually of the Thoracic type.
• The same thing happens every day between severe, bony wives and their florid, frolicking husbands. "She is a perfect housekeeper and a good wife" exclaim her friends--"why should her husband spend his evenings away from home?" These questions will continue to be asked until we realize that being "a good housekeeper and a good wife" does not fill the bill with a Thoracic man. A wife who will leave the dinner dishes in the kitchen sink occasionally and run away with him for a "lark" on a moment's notice is the kind that retains the love of her f lorid husband. A husband who is willing to leave his favorite magazine, pipe, and slippers to take her out in the evening is the kind a Thoracic woman likes. She even prefers a "gay devil" to a "stick"--as she calls the slow ones.
• So, even when they love him best they usually marry the fat salesman, the Muscular worker who always has a good job, the Thoracic promoter who promises luxury, or the Osseous man who won't take "No" for an answer.
• "When poverty comes in the door love flies out the window" is a saying as old as it is sad. And it is as true as it is both old and sad.
• Poverty does more to bring out the worst in people and conceal the best than anything else in the world.
• Because he lives in his mind and not in his external world the predominantly Cerebral must marry one who also is predominantly Cerebral. The reading of books, attendance at good plays, and the study of great movements constitute the chief enjoyments of this type and if he has a mate who cares nothing for these things his marriage is bound to be a failure.
• But here's the rub. You will never do anything with that brilliant efficiency save what you LIKE TO DO. Efficiency does not come from duty, or necessity, or goading, or lashing, or anything under heaven save ENJOYMENT OF THE THING ITSELF. Nothing less will ever release those hidden powers, those miraculous forces which, for the lack of a better name, we call "genius."
• Whenever you are considering your fitness for any vocation, ask yourself these questions:
• Self-Question 1 - Am I considering this vocation chiefly because I would enjoy the things it would bring--such as salary, fame, social position or change of scene? If, in your heart, your answer is "Yes," this is not a vocation for you.
• Self-Question 2 - Knowing the requirements of this vocation--its tasks, drudgeries, hours of work, concentration and kind of activity--would I choose to follow them in preference to any other kind of activity even if the income were the same? Would I do these things for the pleasure of doing them and not for the pay? If, in your heart, you can answer "Yes" to these questions, your problem is settled; you will succeed in that vocation. For you will so enjoy your work that it will be play. Being play, you will do it so happily that you will get from it new strength each day.
• Self-Question 3 - Do I tend to follow, of my own accord, for the sheer joy of it, the kinds of activity demanded by this vocation which I am contemplating? If you do not you will never succeed in this line of work.
• To be a success you must PRODUCE something out of the ordinary for the world.
• But they found a line that fitted their particular talents, and they went ahead cultivating those talents without asking for everything in advance.
• Life is full of opportunities for every person who will consult his own capacities and aim for the big chance.
• Parents can be divided into three classes--those who over-estimate their children, those who under-estimate their children, and those who do not estimate them at all.
• I don't want any of my boys to be lawyers. Lawyers are all liars. Ministers are worse; they're all a bunch of Sissies. Doctors are all fakes. Actors are all bad eggs; and business is one big game of cheat or be cheated. I'm going to see that every boy I've got becomes a farmer.
• He must avoid working for, with, under or over others. The Osseous should never have a partner if he can help it.