worthy and noble by riches.

And just as by riches there come many goods, so by poverty come there
many harms and evils; and therefore says Cassiodore,[17] poverty the
mother of ruin, that is to say, the mother of overthrowing or falling
down; and therefore saith Piers Alphonse: One of the greatest
adversities of the world is when a free man by kind, or of birth, is
constrained by poverty to eat the alms of his enemy. And the same
saith Innocent in one of his books; he saith that sorrowful and
mishappy is the condition of a poor beggar, for if he asks not his
meat he dieth of hunger, and if he ask he dieth for shame; and dire
necessity constraineth him to ask; and therefore saith Solomon: That
better it is to die than for to have such poverty; and, as the same
Solomon saith: Better it is to die of bitter death, than for to live
in such wise.

By these reasons that I have said unto you, and by many other reasons
that I could say, I grant you that riches are good to 'em that well
obtained them, and to him that well uses riches; and therefore will I
shew you how ye should behave you in gathering of your riches, and in
what manner ye should use 'em. First, ye should get 'em without great
desire, by good leisure, patiently, and not over hastily, for a man
that is too desiring to get riches abandoneth him first to theft and
to all other evils; and therefore saith Solomon: He that hasteth him
too busily to wax rich, he shall be not innocent: he saith also, that
the riches that hastily cometh to a man soon lightly goeth and passeth
from a man, but that riches that cometh little and little waxeth alway
and multiplieth. And, sir, ye should get riches by your wit and by
your travail, unto your profit, and that without wrong or harm doing
to any other person; for the law saith: There maketh no man himself
rich, if he do harm to another wight; that is to say, that Nature
defendeth and forbiddeth by right, that no man make himself rich unto
the harm of another person.

And Tullius[18] saith: That no sorrow, no dread of death, nothing that
may fall unto a man, is so much against nature as a man to increase
his owyn profit to harm of another man. And though the great men and
the mighty men get riches more lightly than thou, yet shalt thou not
be idle nor slow to do thy profit, for thou shalt in all wise flee
idleness; for Solomon saith: That idleness teacheth a man to do many
evils; and the same Solomon saith: That he that travailet