Be ever active in the management of the economy, because the root of wealth is economic activity; inactivity brings material distress.
Moral excellence is an ornament for personal beauty; righteous conduct, for high birth; success, for learning; and proper spending, for wealth.
Accumulated wealth is saved by spending, just as incoming fresh water is saved by letting out stagnant water.
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier for our living in it.
I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top. — You need take no notice of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite unintelligible to anyone but myself.
Bear in mind, that if through toil you accomplish a good deed, that toil will quickly pass from you, the good deed will not leave you so long as you live; but if through pleasure you do anything dishonourable, the pleasure will quickly pass away, that dishonourable act will remain with you for ever.