Heart-life, soul-life, hope, joy, and love, are true riches.
–Beecher
When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; When health is lost, something is lost; When character is lost, all is lost.
-Motto over the walls of a school in Germany
We were always without a sou, but we never spoke of money, for money counted for nothing in our ambition. –Rousseau
“Meal, please your Majesty, is a halfpenny a peck at Athens, and water I get for nothing!” This was the answer made by Socrates to King Archelaus, who had pressed him to give up preaching in the dirty streets of Athens, and come live with him in his splendid courts.
“I don’t want such things,” said Epictetus to the rich Roman orator who was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; “and besides you are poorer than I am. You have silver vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. My mind furnishes me with abundant occupation in lieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you; mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied.”
“I have a rich neighbor,” said Izaak Walton, “who is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole business of his life is to get money, and more money; he is still drudging on, and says that ‘The diligent hand maketh rich;’ and it is true indeed; but he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy; or, as was wisely said by a man of great observation, ‘that there may be as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them.’ The keys that keep those riches hang often heavily at the rich man’s girdle. Let us be thankful for health and a competence, and for a quiet conscience.”
“Money is not needful,” said Professor Blackie to the young men of Edinburgh University; “power is not needful; liberty is not needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone is that which can truly save us.”
“The real benefactors of mankind,” says Emerson, “are the men and women who can raise their fellow-beings out of the world of corn and money; who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in their higher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectual realm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness by dollars and cents; who can make men forget their stomachs and feast on being’s banquet.” He is the richest man who enriches his country most; in whom the people feel richest and proudest; who gives himself with his money; who opens the doors of opportunity widest to those about him; who is ears to the deaf, eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. Such a man makes every acre of land in his community worth more, and makes richer every man who lives near him. On the other hand, many a millionaire has impoverished the town in which he lived, and lessened the value of every foot of land.
What is character but the poor man’s capital? Is not character an available piece of property? Is it not estimated as moral security, the noblest of possessions? “It is an estate in the general good will and respect of men; and they who invest in it will find their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won.”
“Thee shall do as well by me as I do by thee,” said a Quaker tanner, when he took an apprentice. The boy won his employer’s confidence by his honesty, good nature, and industry. “Henry,” said the Friend, “I think of making thee a fine present when thy time is out. I cannot tell thee what it is to be; but it shall be worth more to thee than a hundred pounds.” When the apprenticeship expired, the Quaker said, “I will give thy present to thy father,” adding, as he addressed the latter, “Thy son is the best boy I ever had. This is the present—a good name.” Henry’s golden visions vanished; but his father said, “I would rather hear you say that of my son than to see you give him all the money you are worth, for ‘a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.’” It was the >outcome of the lad’s own exertion, the reward of his own good principles and conduct. A good name: “Without it, gold has no value; birth, no distinction; station, no dignity; beauty, no charm; age, no reverence.”
“Character is like stock in trade,” said Dr. Hawes, of Hartford; “the more of it a man possesses the greater his facilities for making additions to it. Character is power—is influence; it makes friends, creates funds, draws patronage and support, and opens a sure and easy way to wealth, honor, and happiness.”
How were a multitude of business men who lost every dollar they had in the Chicago fire enabled to resume business at once, some in a wholesale business, without money? Their record was their bank account. The commercial agencies said they were square men; that they had always paid one hundred cents on a dollar; that they had paid promptly, and that they were industrious, and dealt honorably with all men. Their record was as good as a bank account. They drew on their character. Character was the coin which enabled penniless men to buy thousands of dollars’ worth of goods. Their integrity did not burn up with their stores. The best part of them was beyond reach of fire, and could not be burned.
A good character is a precious thing, above rubies, gold, crowns, or kingdoms, and the work of making it is the noblest labor on earth. Money- getting has well been called unhealthy when it impoverishes the mind, or dries up the sources of the spiritual life; when it extinguishes the sense of beauty, and makes one indifferent to the wonders of nature and art; when it blunts the moral sense, and confuses the distinction between right and wrong, virtue and vice; when it stifles religious impulse, and blots all thoughts of God from the soul.
It is just as important to set apart time for the development of our aesthetic faculties as for cultivating the money-getting instinct. A man cannot live by bread alone. His higher life demands an impalpable food. It takes a large bill of fare to feed an immortal being. The mind and soul in a well-developed man are ever more imperious in their demand for the true and the beautiful than is the body for material food.
Character is perpetual wealth, and by the side of him who possesses it the millionaire who has it not seems a pauper. Compared with it, what are houses and lands, stocks and bonds? “It is better that great souls should live in small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses.” Plain living, rich thought, and grand effort are real riches.
Neither a man’s means, nor his worth, are measurable by his money. If he has a fat purse and a lean heart, a broad estate and a narrow understanding, what will his “means” do for him—what will his “worth” gain him? What sadder sight is there than an old man who has spent his whole life getting instead of growing? If he has piled up books, statuary, and paintings, with his wealth, he may be a stranger amongst them. How poor he is if his soul has shriveled to that of a miser, and if all his nobler instincts are dead!
Do you call him successful who wears a bulldog expression that but too plainly tells the story of how he gained his fortune, taking but never giving? Can you not read in that browbeating face the sad experience of widows and orphans? Do you call him a self-made man who has unmade others to make himself— who tears others down to build himself up? Can a man be really rich who makes others poorer? Can he be happy in whose every lineament chronic avarice is seen as plainly as hunger in the countenance of a wolf? How seldom are sweet, serene, beautiful faces seen on men who have been very successful as the world rates success! Nature expresses in the face and manner the sentiment which rules the heart.
“When I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love,” says Sydney Smith, “with a vehement love, with a love coeval with life,--what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which if you are poor will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel that it is unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which
