CHARACTER - The Grandest Thing in the World by Orison Swett Marden

Author:Orison Swett Marden [Marden, Orison Swett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788075839084
Publisher: Musaicum Press
Published: 2017-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter VII.

The Wealth of the Commonwealth

Table of Contents

The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is—spotless Reputation: that away,

Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.

-Shakespeare

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.

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