Thomas Tusser Quotes
Who quick be to borrow and slow be to pay, their credit is naught, go they ever so gay.
Tusser, Thomas. Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie. Edited by W. Payne and Sidney J. Herrtage, Trübner & Co., 1878, p. 20.
Almost every major corporation that is growing must borrow money to finance the growth. There is a great temptation to do this continuously, as if all works out the borrowed money is paid back and the nation has grown. However, not every investment succeeds, and when they do, few nations will take the growth and save it for a future date when a national investment does not work out as well as hoped. Gradually national debt as a proportion of the economy gets larger and larger and it makes mew investments more and more difficult to succeed because of the higher rates of interest that must be paid. Every modern country must find a balance. Those that do not can have a financial disaster such as Greece in the early part of the 21st century.
Banks and other lending institutions don’t want to risk their loan money. So they prefer to lend money to those who do not need it rather than those who do.
Thomas Tusser was an English poet and farmer, best known for his instructional poem Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, an expanded version of his original title, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, first published in 1557. For Tusser the garden was the domain of the housewife, and the 1562 text expands on this theme. Scholars also consider it a text of interest for its defense of enclosures. It was among the best selling poetry books of the Elizabethan age.
