| "The way to wealth is as plain as the way to | | | | individual and by society than the condition |
| market -- it depends on two words, industry | | | | of poverty; it maddens a good man to crime |
| and frugality; that is, waste neither time | | | | and drives a madman to destruction. The |
| nor money, but make the best of both. Without | | | | condition of poverty is not a normal one and |
| industry and frugality nothing will do; with | | | | may quite easily be thrown off by any one who |
| them everything." -- Franklin. | | | | has health and the will of progress. It was |
| | | | Thucydides who said this about 425 B. C.: |
| As a man chooses his coat for its wearing | | | | |
| qualities or for the moment's passing whim, | | | | "An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any |
| so does he choose his destiny. The | | | | man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed |
| responsibility and the result lie with the | | | | disgraceful." |
| chooser. Each living person chooses--and each | | | | |
| hour that passes fixes his choice deeper and | | | | Nearly 2,200 years later Oliver Goldsmith |
| deeper in his daily life. | | | | said: |
| | | | |
| Wealth is a state of mind or perhaps 'twould | | | | "To be poor, and seem to be poor, is a |
| be better to say that wealth is created | | | | certain way never to rise." |
| through a state of mind. Few people get rich | | | | |
| or acquire riches at a single stroke; most | | | | So for more than 2,000 years, it has been |
| people who become rich grow rich, and the | | | | understood that the person, who was poor and |
| growth and development of a personal fortune | | | | let it be known, and made little or no effort |
| is sometimes scarcely noted by the busy man | | | | to rise above poverty, was largely |
| or woman, who is thus almost unconsciously | | | | responsible for his own unhappy condition. |
| growing rich. | | | | |
| | | | Poverty and pauperism must not be confused; |
| The acquiring of money and property, once | | | | one who has, through misfortune, ill-health |
| begun, is a simple and easy process; growing | | | | or a combination of circumstances, become a |
| rich comes through habits that are such fixed | | | | pauper may have left to him no avenue of |
| parts of one's daily life that, once on the | | | | escape. The pauper is to be pitied and to be |
| road to wealth, it would be quite difficult, | | | | helped. |
| if not wholly impossible, to stop the | | | | |
| growth*.* | | | | The poor are those people who spend more than |
| | | | they get or at least spend all they get; |
| "If you live according to what nature | | | | Bruyere put it thus--"He is poor whose |
| requires, you mill never be poor; if | | | | expenses exceed his income." If such a |
| according to the notions of men, you will | | | | condition should obtain long enough, that |
| never be rich. This is especially detrimental | | | | person would be a pauper; from poverty to |
| to us, that we live, not according to the | | | | pauperism is not a long step; it is only a |
| light of reason, but after the fashion set by | | | | short slide. |
| others." | | | | |
| | | | Wealth, ease, comfort and even contentment |
| These thoughts from Lucius Annaeus Seneca, | | | | are within the reach of each one of us, |
| who was born in Rome before the year One. It | | | | though we all travel different roads toward |
| is easy to see that the same things kept | | | | our selected goals. The paths of some of us |
| people poor in those days as in our own time | | | | lie over mountains where, if we have the |
| and the principles of living well and happily | | | | strength, we may leap from peak to peak of |
| and gradually acquiring wealth have not | | | | success, but the many of us, the great |
| changed a whit since the year One. | | | | multitude, who travel the level plains, must |
| | | | approach success steadily rod by rod, mile by |
| There is no condition into which a man may | | | | mile, day by day and year by year. |
| come that is more to be feared by the | | | | |