Stop, and reflect well, before borrowing money under any circumstances. To an honest man, indebtedness is ever a double torture—self-torture in the haunting possibility of not being able to keep his word, and the torture of imagining what, in that case, will be thought of him.
Stop, dead, before borrowing money that you are not sure of being able to repay. As for the man who borrows without the intention to repay, he is even worse than a professional thief, and as fully deserving of social ostracism.
Stop before becoming that unmitigated bore, a chronic borrower. He is at best a pitiful creature, shunned even when commiserated, and the strongest ties of friendship cannot long withstand the wrench of his proximity.
Stop, even before lending money to a friend, and reflect that non-liquidation must cost you your money, and may cost you—your friend.
Stop, however, if you mean to grant a request for a loan, and grant it freely. To produce it as if extracting a wisdom-tooth, or accompany it with a stereotyped moral lecture on the hardness of the times, etc., is much like placing his request on a level with mendicancy.
Stop short—indeed, as abruptly as you please—of lending money to a known profligate or spendthrift. The proverbial blood from a turnip may be sooner expected than genuine thankfulness for an accommodation from such a source, and the probability is that he will secretly laugh at you for a fool.
Stop, however, and reflect well before adopting a general and irrevocable rule of never lending money under any circumstances. Many eminent men, the reverse of hard-hearted, have conscientiously adopted this rule, but whether it is the best, as the world goes, is a question.
Stop before compromising with such a rule by offering as a gift that which is entreated as a loan. This is the course usually pursued by the eminent men alluded to above; but such a proffer is always humiliating, and often insulting.
Stop before running in debt, even for groceries or beer, for that for which you can pay on the spot. It is a pernicious habit that must steadily engender looser and looser notions about money matters.
Stop before adopting honesty as your standard merely on the immorally aphoristic grounds of its being the best policy. True integrity should stand on its merits, win or lose; whereas any shrewd rascal would be honest on occasion, if satisfied that he would make by it.