Proverbs 19:5-8

He may dodge the human court, but no liar escapes the bar of God. Indulge one lie and you soon lose all fear of an oath; the habit corrodes the conscience. The false witness breaks both great commandments at once — he wrongs his neighbor and he insults the God of truth — and "all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth" (Revelation 21:8). No excuse is admitted in that courtroom.

Take these together — they are man's native selfishness photographed without mercy. Everyone courts the powerful and flatters the generous; men value the rich for their possessions, not their virtues. And the poor man gets the reverse: even his own brothers cool toward him, his friends keep their distance, and when he chases them with words they have already vanished. It is a humbling portrait of the human heart — including ours. But it should drive us upward: if men are this eager to win the favor of a prince who gives gifts, how much more should we seek the favor of the Prince of heaven, who gives the best gift of all? And it should make us tender — "Lord, in my greatest plenty, help me to mind and feel others' poverty."

To pursue real wisdom is, quite simply, to love yourself in the truest sense — and to chase folly is to destroy your own soul, whatever it feels like at the time. Note the verb pair: wisdom must be both gotten and kept. And the wisdom in view is not the cleverness of the schools — the best scholars and greatest philosophers die fools without it — but the wisdom from above, which turns everything to gold, making whatever does us good also make us good. The man who gets it loves his soul; the man who follows his own way hates it, whatever he tells himself.