When we are satisfied with the present we do not think of the future.
The more mystery is encouraged, the more deceit can impose upon the human mind.
If wisdom and diamonds grew on the same tree we could soon tell how much men loved wisdom.
Beggars
We have come to look upon the poor beggar as a nuisance; upon the man who comes to our doors for food or clothes as one who has no claim upon our charity. The common beggar is, as a rule, a worthless character, but let us be fair to him. He asks for but little; seldom for more than a bite, or for a few pennies. The poor beggar has only himself to enforce his appeal, and often he is an injury to his own cause. A dirty, ragged, vice-stained wreck of humanity is a poor argument to offer for sympathy or help. The man who begs in the name of man, and with that name rubbed in the dirt besides, gets little for his asking.
We do not like any beggars, but we need to understand that it is not the man in rags, who asks for a piece of bread or meat, that is the only beggar in the world. There is another and more dangerous beggar that we open our doors to, and treat with politeness and respect, and whose appeals we honor; it is the well-dressed beggar who asks for the money which the arm of labor has coined from its strength, who takes not pennies where he can get dollars, and who enforces his appeal with the name of God; it is the ecclesiastical beggar, whose hand is stretched out to take the earnings of toil, or the profits of trade; whose hand would as soon take little from poverty as plenty from affluence.