The fortunate man is he who, born poor, or nobody, works gradually up to wealth and consideration, and, having got them, dies before he finds they were not worth so much trouble.
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
CHAPTER V
Make 'em laugh; make 'em cry; make 'em wait.
Advice given to an aspiring writer.
Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
Possibly a misattribution, ascribed to Reade in Notes and Queries (9th Series) vol. 12, 17 October 1903. It appears (as an un-sourced quotation) in Life and Labor (1887) by Samuel Smiles and in the front of The Power of Womanhood by Ellice Hopkins (1899) ISBN 1421956128 as well as in the text (i.e., as part of the text, and not in quotation marks) in both (1909) R. Dimsdale Stocker, Brain-Culture or Phrenometry: Auto-Suggestion and Cerebral Stimulation, What It Is, and How It's Done (Second, Revised Edition), L.N. Fowler, (London), and (1919) Youth and Sex by Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly ISBN 1414250800.
No original source has ever been isolated. Its structure strongly reflects that of a "classical Chinese" set of aphorisms; and it may have been deliberately constructed in that form, by a non-Chinese, to imply an oriental (and, perhaps, far wiser) origin.
Finally, almost all of those who cite the complete piece:
We sow a thought and reap an act;
We sow an act and reap a habit;
We sow a habit and reap a character;
We sow a character and reap a destiny.
state that, in their view, it was written to expand and embellish the notion that was expressed at Proverbs XXIII:7 ("For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he").