A man had a wooden god and, being poor, kept begging it to do him good. As he went on doing so and his poverty only increased, he grew angry, and, taking the god by the leg, he knocked it against the wall. The god's head suddenly broke, and gold poured out of it. The man gathered it up and cried, "Your mind works backwards, I see, and you are ungrateful; for when I honoured you, you gave me no help, and now that I have just struck you, you reward me by heaping benefits on me."
One gains nothing by honouring a wicked man, and gets more out of him by striking him.
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