I don't take a high-minded
view of money myself. I don't tell people to despise it. I always tell the
fellows here to realise what they can endure and what they can't. The first
requisite for a sensible man is to find work which he enjoys, and the next
requisite is for him to earn as much as he really needs--that is to say
without having to think daily and hourly about money. I don't over-estimate
what money can do, but it is foolish to under-estimate what the want of it
can do. I have seen more fine natures go to pieces under the stress of
poverty than under any other stress that I know. Money is perfectly
powerless as a shield against many troubles--and on the other hand it can
save a man from innumerable little wretchednesses and horrors which destroy
the beauty and dignity of life. I don't believe mechanically in humiliation
and renunciation and ignominy and contempt, as purifying influences. It all
depends upon whether they are gallantly and adventurously and humorously
borne. They often make some people only sore and diffident, and I don't
believe in learning to hate life. Not to learn your own limitations is
childish: and one of the insolences which is most heavily punished is that
of making a sacrifice without knowing if you can endure the consequences of
it. The people who begin by despising money as vulgar are generally the
people who end by making a mess which other people have to sweep up.
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