"Values" 
by Gibran Khalil Gibran


Once a man unearthed in his field a marble statue of great beauty. And he took it to a
collector who loved all 
beautiful things and offered it to him for sale, and the collector bought it for a large price. And
they parted. 

And as the man walked home with his money he thought, and he said to himself, "How much
life this money means! 
How can anyone give all this for a dead carved stone buried and undreamed of in the earth for
a thousand years?" 

And now the collector was looking at his statue, and he was thinking, and he said to himself,
"What beauty! What 
life! The dream of what a soul! -- and fresh with the sweet sleep of a thousand years. How can
anyone give all this for money, dead and dreamless?"