Stop short of making love at all, if you are not of an affectionate disposition; or, when too late—that is, when married, love will be likely to stop short of you.
In Money Matters.
Stop, first, and understand the value of money—the importance of never being without some money, even if a very little.
Stop, next, and understand that money is nothing in itself alone, but valuable and powerful only in what it will purchase and can purchase. A pure love of it for itself, and not for what it represents, develops a loathsome disease—the disease of miserliness.
Stop short of envying the rich, even if penniless yourself. A philosophical reflection as to the causes of your bad fortune, together with a resolve to mend it by a more enlightened course, is your only remedy.
Stop, however, yet shorter of the vulgar, pigheaded notion that money, even by the ton-weight, can be everything without moral or intellectual backing. If this were so, wealth would be more glorious than wisdom, which happily, it is not.
Stop before parting with money, even to an insignificant amount, without some sort of equivalent. This rule need not render you either parsimonious or uncharitable, since even alms-giving brings a return in the consciousness of having yielded to a kindly impulse.
Stop before cultivating a hoarding spirit, and remember that, logically, as between the miser and the spendthrift, the latter has the best of the bargain. For, while the spendthrift has the selfish satisfaction of squandering his fortune in his own person, the miser is the dupe of his own self-denial, for the benefit of others who come after him.
Stop, however, before emulating the spendthrift any more than the miser. If there is never any love for the scheming parsimony of the one, neither is there ever any gratitude for the thoughtless largesse of the other.