How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Read Free Book Online Page A

become a better
    wife. He reported to the class: “I was surprised by such
    a request. Frankly, it would have been easy for me to list
    six things I would like to change about her - my heavens,
    she could have listed a thousand things she would
    like to change about me - but I didn’t. I said to her, ‘Let
    me think about it and give you an answer in the morning.’

    “The next morning I got up very early and called the
    florist and had them send six red roses to my wife with a
    note saying: ‘I can’t think of six things I would like to
    change about you. I love you the way you are.’

    “When I arrived at home that evening, who do you
    think greeted me at the door: That’s right. My wife! She
    was almost in tears. Needless to say, I was extremely
    glad I had not criticized her as she had requested.

    “The following Sunday at church, after she had reported
    the results of her assignment, several women
    with whom she had been studying came up to me and
    said, ‘That was the most considerate thing I have ever
    heard.’ It was then I realized the power of appreciation.”

    Florenz Ziegfeld, the most spectacular producer who
    ever dazzled Broadway, gained his reputation by his
    subtle ability to “glorify the American girl.” Time after
    time, he took drab little creatures that no one ever
    looked at twice and transformed them on the stage into
    glamorous visions of mystery and seduction. Knowing
    the value of appreciation and confidence, he made
    women feel beautiful by the sheer power of his gallantry
    and consideration. He was practical: he raised the salary
    of chorus girls from thirty dollars a week to as high as
    one hundred and seventy-five. And he was also chivalrous;
    on opening night at the Follies, he sent telegrams
    to the stars in the cast, and he deluged every chorus girl
    in the show with American Beauty roses.

    I once succumbed to the fad of fasting and went for six
    days and nights without eating. It wasn’t difficult. I was
    less hungry at the end of the sixth day than I was at the
    end of the second. Yet I know, as you know, people who
    would think they had committed a crime if they let their
    families or employees go for six days without food; but
    they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and
    sometimes sixty years without giving them the hearty
    appreciation that they crave almost as much as they
    crave food.

    When Alfred Lunt, one of the great actors of his time,
    played the leading role in Reunion in Vienna, he said,
    “There is nothing I need so much as nourishment for my
    self-esteem.”

    We nourish the bodies of our children and friends and
    employees, but how seldom do we nourish their selfesteem?
    We provide them with roast beef and potatoes
    to build energy, but we neglect to give them kind words
    of appreciation that would sing in their memories for
    years like the music of the morning stars.

    Paul Harvey, in one of his radio broadcasts, “The Rest
    of the Story,” told how showing sincere appreciation can
    change a person’s life. He reported that years ago a
    teacher in Detroit asked Stevie Morris to help her find a
    mouse that was lost in the classroom. You see, she appreciated
    the fact that nature had given Stevie something
    no one else in the room had. Nature had given Stevie a
    remarkable pair of ears to compensate for his blind eyes.
    But this was really the first time Stevie had been shown
    appreciation for those talented ears. Now, years later, he
    says that this act of appreciation was the beginning of a
    new life. You see, from that time on he developed his
    gift of hearing and went on to become, under the stage
    name of Stevie Wonder, one of the great pop singers and
    and songwriters of the seventies.*

    * Paul Aurandt,

Paul Harvey’s The Rest

the Story (New York: Doubleday,
    1977). Edited and compiled by Lynne Harvey. Copyright © by
    Paulynne, Inc.

    Some readers are saying right now as they read these
    lines: “Oh, phooey! Flattery! Bear oil!