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Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him.
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Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
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Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains. Plow deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.
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Little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of care about a horseshoe nail.
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If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as of getting.
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Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. Who dainties love shall beggars prove; fools make feasts, and wise men eat them. Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.
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If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
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The second vice is lying, the first is running in debt; lying rides up on debt's back.
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Creditors have better memories than debtors.
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Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
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As if we could kill time without injuring eternity.
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. . . the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required, to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
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The man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do . . . . I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit?
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While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
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We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and the higher state to be forgotten.
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Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation; now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors . . .
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I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.
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Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
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In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely . . . .
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Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.
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Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today, to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance. . .
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