Exert your talents and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.—Dr. Johnson.
The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade
Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,
Where all his long anxieties forgot
Amid the charms of a sequester'd spot,
Or recollected only to gild o'er
And add a smile to what was sweet before,
He may possess the joys he thinks he sees,
Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,
Improve the remnant of his wasted span.
And having lived a trifler, die a man.
—Cowper.
But what, it may be asked, are the requisites for a life of retirement? A man may be weary of the toils and torments of business, and yet quite unfit for the tranquil retreat. Without literature, friendship, and religion, retirement is in most cases found to be a dead, flat level, a barren waste, and a blank. Neither the body nor the soul can enjoy health and life in a vacuum.—Rusticus.
Riches.—Riches exclude only one inconvenience,—that is, poverty.—Dr. Johnson.
Great abundance of riches cannot of any man be both gathered and kept without sin.—Erasmus.
Riches, honors, and pleasures are the sweets which destroy the mind's appetite for its heavenly food; poverty, disgrace, and pain are the bitters which restore it.—Bishop Horne.
A man's true wealth is the good he does in this world.—Mohammed.
Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.—Shakespeare.
He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income.—La Bruyère.
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.—Beecher.