William Feather Biography Quotes 42 Report mistakes

Overview
William Feather (1889, 1981) was an American publisher and author whose crisp, plainspoken essays and aphorisms about work, thrift, salesmanship, and everyday judgment became staples of business culture in the United States. He built a career that joined practical enterprise with lively prose, using his own printing and publishing firm as both laboratory and launchpad for ideas about efficiency, responsibility, and the pleasures of well-done work. Through a magazine issued under his name and later book collections, he reached executives, shop foremen, clerks, and students alike, earning a reputation for common sense expressed with humor and brevity.

Early Life and Formation
Feather came of age in an era that rewarded initiative and self-education. He read widely, learned the mechanics of printing and publication, and cultivated the habit of writing regularly about the puzzles of business and life. Early newsroom and shop-floor experiences grounded him in deadlines, typography, and the rhythms of commercial work, shaping the voice that would make him widely quotable.

Printing and Publishing
Feather established a Cleveland-based printing and publishing enterprise that became known for reliable craftsmanship, quick turnaround, and well-edited house organs and catalogs. The William Feather Company produced brochures, trade periodicals, and direct-mail pieces for clients around the country. He led a team of editors, typesetters, proofreaders, illustrators, and press operators whose daily collaboration embodied the very discipline and economy he praised in print. Colleagues who managed schedules, guarded quality, and kept the presses running were among the most important people in his working life, and their skills shaped the firm's reputation and reach.

The William Feather Magazine
Feather issued a magazine under his own name for years, using it to publish short essays, sketches, and pointed maxims. The magazine circulated among business clients, civic groups, and libraries, and it brought him a national readership. Many of the pieces later appeared in book form, giving his ideas a durable place on office shelves and in personal libraries. His magazine also served as a gathering point for his staff editors and designers, whose close collaboration with him refined the spare, readable style that became his signature.

Authorial Voice and Themes
Feather favored one-page reflections that began in a specific observation, a missed appointment, a sloppy invoice, an unreturned letter, and widened into reflections on cost, character, and time. He wrote about saving before spending, finishing what one starts, and the freedom that comes from order. He criticized waste and pomposity with a light touch and celebrated the practical joys of well-kept tools, clear language, and punctuality. Newspapers and business newsletters reprinted his lines, and his aphorisms migrated into calendars, planners, and speeches, spreading far beyond his own publications.

People and Community
Family and colleagues anchored Feather's days. At home, a supportive household gave him the quiet to write and the perspective to test his ideas about duty and frugality. In the shop, foremen, press operators, and copy editors formed a tight circle that turned manuscripts into finished products. Among the people closest to his professional legacy were the successors who kept the presses running after him; his son, William A. Feather Jr., became a central figure in continuing the firm's work and sustaining the standards the founder had set. In Cleveland's civic and business associations, Feather exchanged ideas with other leaders who valued enterprise and public-spirited discussion; their invitations to speak and contribute essays widened his audience and sharpened his thinking.

Public Presence and Influence
Feather spoke to trade groups and wrote for house journals, translating everyday problems into memorable counsel. He became a go-to source for editors looking for a crisp quotation to introduce an article on productivity or character. While he avoided fads, he welcomed new tools when they clearly improved work, reinforcing his pragmatic bent. Readers frequently wrote to him, challenging or extending his observations; those exchanges, along with conversations with clients and staff, fed new columns and kept his writing grounded in real problems.

Later Years and Legacy
Feather continued to write and to supervise publishing projects deep into later life. By the time of his death in 1981, he had left a distinctive body of prose that bridged the worlds of commerce and letters. His company persisted, guided by the people he had trained and inspired, and his brief, pointed sayings continued to appear in anthologies, business seminars, and office corridors. His legacy rests not on elaborate theories but on a set of habits, clarity, economy, responsibility, that he practiced in the print shop, in the accounts, and on the page. In that unity of work and word, he became a durable voice of American business common sense.

Our collection contains 42 quotes who is written by William, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Motivational - Wisdom - Justice - Live in the Moment.

• 1949 The Business of Life (Book)
• 1937 The Ideal Home (Book)
• 1937 As We Were Saying (Book)

• Wikipedia