Stop before assuming an oracular or infallible attitude—in other words, setting yourself up as a small god—before your own family. Ten to one, it is an assumption that you cannot maintain with any degree of consistency, and one which may entail a humiliating back-down when least expected.
In Business Life.
Stop short of attempting a business enterprise wholly beyond your mental and financial equipment. To attempt the rôle of a railroad magnate, for instance, when you have the soul of a licensed fish-vender, or the manipulation of a government loan with hardly enough capital for a fruit-stand, would be more ambitious than wise.
Stop before adopting rigorous and unbending methods that, under a change of fortune, can be quoted against you to your disadvantage. Thus, to never lend money, on principle, when prosperous, but be perfectly willing to borrow it when broke, might subject you to unpleasant comment.
Stop before assuming a domineering, Jovian tone toward those with less money than you, even if you have a corner on the market. Men are often like rats in this, that they fight when they are cornered.
Stop when already so deep into a hopeless speculation that you can’t beg or borrow another cent, when certain ruin stares you in the face, and even your pawn-tickets are at a discount. Forlorn hopes are only practicable in serial stories and war.
Stop, even at the height of prosperity, and make sure of the future by settling upon your family a competence that shall thenceforth forever be secured to them, come what may. This prudent course, feasible and honorable during prosperity, would be just the reverse if deferred until after business disaster may have come.
Stop short of imagining that there is any more luck in a legitimate business than in games of chance—in other words, that there is any at all. Or, if there is any, it consists of superior energy, foresight, shrewdness and application, wherein, of course, the stronger wins while the weaker goes to the wall.
Stop, and reflect well, before venturing outside of a legitimate, fairly-paying business upon the sea of speculation, which is in reality but gambling under another name.