Canada was open for business. And closed for everything else.

-Atwood, Margaret Eleanor
  Essay on censorship in The Globe and Mail,'The Porn Patrol',18 Feb. Collected in Douglas Fetherling (ed) Best Canadian Essays (1989).

   In civil business;What first? Boldness;What second, and third? Boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.12,'Of Boldness'.

Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.11,'Of Great Place'.

Men of business have a solid judgment, a wonderful guessing power of what isgoing to happen, each in his own trade, but they have never practised themselves in reasoning out their judgments and in supporting their guesses byargument; probably if they did so, some of the finer and correcter parts of their anticipations would vanish.

-Bagehot,Walter
  'Postulates of English Political Economy', in Economic Studies (1880).

They talk a good game, but economists hardly know enough about business cycles to figure out where they come from, let alone where they're going.

-Becker, Gary Stanley
  'How Bad Will the Next Downturn Be?', in Business Week, 10  Apr.

In Atlanta, the first question is'What's your business?' In Macon, it is 'Where do you go to church?' In Augusta they want your grandmother's maiden name.But in Savannah, the first question is'What would you like to drink?'

-Berendt,John
  Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

There's No Business Like Show Business.

-Berlin, Irving originally Israel Baline
  Title of song from the film  Annie GetYour Gun.

They that go down to thesea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the L, and his wonders in the deep.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms107:23^4.

Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Romans12:11.

Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.

-Bible (NewTestament)
  Thessalonians 4:11.

If we are to negotiate, I envisage that we shall playan essentially modest role; that of an honest broker who really intends to do business.

-of)
  Speech to the Reichstag,19 Feb, on preventing war in Europe.

Most business meetings are staged to supply people who'd rather talk than work with people who'd rather listen than work.

-Boyd, L(ouis) M(alcolm)
  'Grab Bag', in the San Francisco Chronicle,7  Apr.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

-Butler, Samuel
  The Way of  All Flesh, ch.19.

While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for theindividual, it isbestfor therace, becauseit insures thesurvival ofthefittest ineverydepartment. Weaccept and welcome, therefore, as conditions towhichwe must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential to the future progress of the race.

-Carnegie, Andrew
  'The Gospel of  Wealth', in the North  American Review,  Jun.

'If everybody minded their own business,'the Duchess said, in a hoarse growl,'the world would go round a deal faster than it does.'

-Dodgson
  Alice's  Adventures in Wonderland, ch.6,'Pig and Pepper'.

Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Of the British people's view of  World War I. Speech at the Guildhall, London, 9 Nov.

   It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

-Congreve,William
  The Double Dealer, epistle dedicatory.

The chief business of the American people is business.

-Coolidge, (John) Calvin
  Speech to the Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, 17  Jan.

Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my Administration has been minding my own business.

-Coolidge, (John) Calvin
  Press conference, Mar.

Here is a pleasant situation, and yet nothing pleasant to be seen. Here is a harbour without ships, a port without trade, a fishery without nets, a people without business; and, that which is worse than all, they do not seem to desire business, much less do they understand it.

-Defoe, Daniel
^7  Of Kirkcudbright, Scotland.  A  Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, letter12.