A little integrity is better than any career. This reality is the
foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art. At the top or at the
bottom of all illusions I set the cheat which still leads us to work and
live for appearances, in spite of our conviction, in all sane hours, that
it is what we really are that avails with friends, with strangers, and with
fate or fortune.
One would think from the talk of men, that riches and poverty were a great
matter; and our civilization mainly respects it. But the Indians say, that
they do not think the white man with his brow of care, always toiling,
afraid of heat and cold, and keeping within doors, has any advantage of
them. The permanent interest of every man is, never to be in a false
position, but to have the weight of Nature to back him in all that he does.
Riches and poverty are a thick or thin costume; and our life--the life of
all of us--identical. For we transcend the circumstance continually, and
taste the real quality of existence; as in our employments, which only
differ in the manipulations, but express the same laws; or in our thoughts,
which wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams.
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