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Wealth

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How far, O rich, do you extend your senseless avarice? Do you intend to be the sole inhabitants of the earth? ~ Ambrose of Milan
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! ~ Samuel Adams
The international community ... allows nearly 3 billion people—almost half of all humanity—to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth. ~ Kofi Annan
The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?” ~ Matthew Arnold
Labour is the source of all wealth. ~ Friedrich Engels
Everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. ~ Friedrich Engels
How can you say 'I have performed the law and the prophets'? seeing that it is written in the law 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,' and look, many of your brothers, sons of Abraham, are clad with dung, dying for hunger, and your house is full of much goods, and there goes out therefrom nought at all unto them. ~ Jesus in Gospel of the Nazarenes
It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need. ~ Basil of Caesarea
Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves. ~ Étienne de La Boétie
Men who offer laudatory speeches to the rich ... are insidious because, although mere abundance is by itself quite enough to puff up the souls of its possessors, and to corrupt them, and to turn them aside from the way by which salvation can be reached, these men bring fresh delusion to the minds of the rich by exciting them with the pleasures that come from their immoderate praises, and by rendering them contemptuous of absolutely everything in the world except the wealth which is the cause of their being admired. In the words of the proverb, they carry fire to fire, when they shower pride upon pride, and heap on wealth, heavy by its own nature, the heavier burden of arrogance. ~ Clement of Alexandria
To possess at the outset so much that we can live comfortably, even if only for our own person and without a family, and can live really independently, that is, without working, is a priceless advantage. ... Only under this favour and patronage of fate is a man born truly free; for only so is he really sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and is able to say every morning ‘The day is mine’. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool. ~ Seneca
The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. ~ Henry David Thoreau
People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves. ~ C. Wright Mills
Those whose minds are attached to wealth on account of their distracted state have no opportunity for liberation from the suffering of mundane existence. ~ Santideva
All you men, whom greatness does so please, ye feast, I fear, like Damocles. ~ Abraham Cowley
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ~ Matthew
There is nothing immoral about wealth; wealth is something to be valued, owned privately, given and exchanged. ~ Lew Rockwell

Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or valuable material possessions. An individual, community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources to the benefit of the common good is known as wealthy.

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A

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  • I have lift up mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich.
  • If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!
  • How far, O rich, do you extend your senseless avarice? Do you intend to be the sole inhabitants of the earth? Why do you drive out the fellow sharers of nature, and claim it all for yourselves? The earth was made for all, rich and poor, in common. Why do you rich claim it as your exclusive right? The soil was given to the rich and poor in common—wherefore, oh, ye rich, do you unjustly claim it for yourselves alone? Nature gave all things in common for the use of all; usurpation created private rights. Property hath no rights. The earth is the Lord's, and we are his offspring. The pagans hold earth as property. They do blaspheme God.
  • The international community ... allows nearly 3 billion people—almost half of all humanity—to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth.
    • Kofi Annan, as quoted in Can Globalization Really Solve Our Problems? in Awake! magazine (22 May 2002)
  • He called to mind all the millionaires he had ever read or heard of; they didn't seem to get much fun out of their riches. The majority of them were martyrs to dyspepsia. They were often weighed down by the cares and responsibilities of their position; the only people who were unable to obtain an audience of them at any time were their friends; they lived in a glare of publicity, and every post brought them hundreds of begging letters, and a few threats; their children were in constant danger from kidnappers, and they themselves, after knowing no rest in life, could not be certain that even their tombs would be undisturbed. Whether they were extravagant or thrifty, they were equally maligned, and, whatever the fortune they left behind them, they could be absolutely certain that, in a couple of generations, it would be entirely dissipated.
  • Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
  • The use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?”
    • Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869), chapter 1, "Sweetness and Light"
  • There are, while human miseries abound,
    A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
    Without one fool or flatterer at your board,
    Without one hour of sickness or disgust.
    • John Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health (1744), Book II, line 195
  • The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others.

B

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  • Divitiae bona ancilla, pessima domina.
    • Riches are a good handmaiden, but the worst mistress.
    • Francis Bacon, De dignitate et augmentis scientiarium, Book VI, Exemplum Antithetorum 6
  • In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
  • I'm not technically rich, but I do have a lot of shit that I don't need, and I refuse to share with others.
    • Maria Bamford, American stand-up commedian. Quote from The Now Show, a radio comedy show on BBC Radio 4, 2006
  • If I was as rich as Rockefeller I'd be richer than Rockefeller, because I'd do a bit of window cleaning on the side.
    • Ronnie Barker (1929–2005), British actor and comedian. Quotation from The Two Ronnies television series
  • The desire for wealth is nearly universal, and none can say it is not laudable, provided the possessor of it accepts its responsibilities, and uses it as a friend to humanity.
    • P. T. Barnum, 'Preserve Your Integrity', The Art of Money Getting (1880)
  • 'But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need.
    • Basil of Caesarea, Saint Basil on Social Justice, edited and translated by C. P. Schroeder (2009), p. 69
  • Who are the greedy? Those who are not satisfied with what suffices for their own needs. Who are the robbers? Those who take for themselves what rightfully belongs to everyone. And you, are you not greedy? Are you not a robber? The things you received in trust as a stewardship, have you not appropriated them for yourself? Is not the person who strips another of clothing called a thief? And those who do not clothe the naked when they have the power to do so, should they not be called the same? The bread you are holding back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy. You are thus guilty of injustice toward as many as you might have aided, and did not.
    • Basil of Caesarea, Saint Basil on Social Justice, edited and translated by C. P. Schroeder (2009), p. 70
  • Those that have wealth must be watchful and wary,
    Power, alas! naught but misery brings!
  • There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
    • Bible Gospel of Luke 16:19-25
  • The wealth ov a person should be estimated, not bi the amount he haz, but bi the use he makes ov it.
  • We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
    • Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice ~ quoted by Raymond Lonergan in Mr. Justice Brandeis, Great American (1941), p. 42
  • N’envions point à une sorte de gens leurs grandes richesses; ils les ont à titre onéreux, et qui ne nous accommoderait point: ils ont mis leur repos, leur santé, leur honneur et leur conscience pour les avoir; cela est trop cher, et il n’y a rien à gagner à un tel marché.
    • Let us not envy a certain class of men for their enormous riches; they have paid such an equivalent for them that it would not suit us; they have given for them their peace of mind, their health, their honour, and their conscience; this is rather too dear, and there is nothing to be made out of such a bargain.
    • Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688), “Of The Gifts of Fortune,” #13
  • Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.
  • The seers of old had fully restrained selves, and were austere. Having abandoned the five strands of sensual pleasures, they practiced their own welfare. The brahmans had no cattle, no gold, no wealth. They had study as their wealth and grain. They guarded the holy life as their treasure.
  • With unimportant exceptions, such as bankruptcies in which some of a company’s losses are borne by creditors, the most that owners in aggregate can earn between now and Judgment Day is what their businesses in aggregate earn. True, by buying and selling that is clever or lucky, investor A may take more than his share of the pie at the expense of investor B. And, yes, all investors feel richer when stocks soar. But an owner can exit only by having someone take his place. If one investor sells high, another must buy high. For owners as a whole, there is simply no magic – no shower of money from outer space – that will enable them to extract wealth from their companies beyond that created by the companies themselves.
  • If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
  • Penny wise, pound foolish.
    • Robert Burton (1577–1640), The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), 'Democritus to the reader'

C

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  • Technology is begining to differentiate the haves and the have nots.
    • Michael Capellas, Chief Executive, Compaq Computers. As he stated on The Money Programme, BBC 2, 6th February 2000
  • Good thoughts his only friends;
    His wealth a well-spent age;
    The earth his sober inn,
    And quiet pilgrimage.
  • The man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during his life, will pass away unwept, unhonoured and insung no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him.
  • An alien Indian, hailing from afar,
    Who in the town of Quito did abide.
    And neighbor claimed to be of Bogata,
    There having come, I know not by what way,
    Did with him speak and solemnly announce
    A country rich in emeralds and gold.

Also, among the things which them engaged, A certain king he told of who, disrobed,
Upon a lake was wont, aboard a raft,
To make oblations, as himself had seen,
His regal form overspread with fragrant oil
On which was laid a coat of powdered gold
From sole of foot unto his highest brow,
Resplendent as the beaming of the sun.

Arrivals without end, he further said,
Were there to make rich votive offerings
Of golden trinkets and of emeralds rare
And divers other of their ornaments;
And worthy credence these things he affirmed;
The soldiers, light of heart and well content,
Then dubbed him El Dorado, and the name
By countless ways was spread throughout the world.
  • Juan de Castellanos, The Quest of El Dorado
  • The rich are inebriate in another way and cannot contrive to grasp these frenzied longings for security. To be rich is another form of intoxication: it spells forgetfulness. In fact, that is what one wants riches for: to forget.
  • The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
    • G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936), English author and mystery novelist, The Flying Inn (1914)
  • The rich live the same all over the world.
    • Christian Dior (1905–1957), French fashion designer. Quoted by Stanley Marcus in the book, Christian Dior, The Man who made the World Look New, by Marie-France Pochna (1996)
  • Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.
    • Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm (vol. 1 of The Second World War), p. 348 (1948). On March 31, 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had informed the House of Commons that Britain would support Poland against any action threatening its independence. This marked the end of submission to Germany. Churchill thought the decision should have been made sooner when it would have been easier to stop Germany.
  • Men who offer laudatory speeches to the rich ... are insidious because, although mere abundance is by itself quite enough to puff up the souls of its possessors, and to corrupt them, and to turn them aside from the way by which salvation can be reached, these men bring fresh delusion to the minds of the rich by exciting them with the pleasures that come from their immoderate praises, and by rendering them contemptuous of absolutely everything in the world except the wealth which is the cause of their being admired. In the words of the proverb, they carry fire to fire, when they shower pride upon pride, and heap on wealth, heavy by its own nature, the heavier burden of arrogance.
  • I say that you ought to get rich, and it is our duty to get rich.
  • Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.
  • And all you men, whom greatness does so please,
    Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles.

D

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  • Wealth doesn't confer automatic happiness, whereas people who are not wealthy but very much want to be, believe it will confer almost automatic and unrelieved happiness. This is not true. Part of the reason is that to get the wealth you have to behave in a way that will definitely not make you happy. It's a beautiful circularity.
    • Felix Dennis, British magazine publisher, entrepreneur and author. From his interview with David Woodward for Director Magazine, September 2006
  • I was not, thank heaven, in a condition which compelled me to make merchandise of Science for the bettering of my fortune.
    • René Descartes, Discourse on Method, J. Veitch, trans. (1899), part 1, p. 8
  • Conquest was how wealth was acquired. Not through entrepreneurship, invention or business. Historically, every culture has despised entrepreneurs and merchants. In India, we have the caste system. Who's at the top? The Brahmin or priest. The entrepreneur is one step from the bottom. The Islamic historian Ibn Khaldūn says that looting is morally preferable to entrepreneurship or trade. Why? Because looting is more manly. In looting, you have to beat the guy in open combat to take his stuff. America is based on a different idea. The idea of acquiring wealth not by taking it from someone else. Instead, wealth can be created through innovation, entrepreneurship and trade. Let's take a look at Manhattan. Reportedly in 1626, Native Americans sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $700 in today's money. There's land all over the world now that you can buy for $700. But when the Dutch bought Manhattan, there was no Manhattan. Prices are astronomical today because of what's been built over the past 300 years. Manhattan is the creation of the people who built it, not the original inhabitants who sold it. Manhattan represents the new American ethic of wealth creation. An alternative to conquest.

E

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  • Wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. ... Everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be employed only by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows that the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital.
  • Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.
  • The horseman serves the horse,
    The neatherd serves the neat,
    The merchant serves the purse,
    The eater serves his meat;
    'T is the day of the chattel,
    Web to weave, and corn to grind;
    Things are in the saddle,
    And ride mankind.

F

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  • Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.
  • In Singapore, house renovation had only one goal — to convey wealth. He had seen houses that appeared huge, with a vast amount of road frontage, only to pass by another day using another route and discover that the same house was narrower than a long boat.
  • Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

G

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  • Is passing large sums of wealth on to your children good for them or right for society?
    • Bill Gates, in his BBC television interview with Jeremy Paxman
  • And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
  • “Harwood is the richest man in the world and ahead of the curve. He’s an agent of change, and massively invested in the status quo. He embodies paradoxical propositions. Too hip to live, too rich to die. Get it?”
    “No.”
    “We think he’s like us, basically,” Klaus says. “He’s trying to hack reality, but he’s going strictly big casino, and he’ll take the rest of the species with him.”
  • There were a few expensively bound and weirdly neutered bookazines here, but he knew from glancing through them that these were bland advertisements for being wealthy, wealthy and deeply, witheringly unimaginative.
  • French economist Thomas Piketty argued in his widely celebrated book “Capital in the 21st Century” that the rich only get richer over a long period of time, creating a permanent aristocracy of wealth. And while it’s true that the combined net worth of the “1 percent” has increased, the actual people in the 1 percent come and go.
    Less than 10 percent of the 400 wealthiest Americans who appeared on the Forbes list in 1982, when “Blade Runner” was released, were still there in 2012. As for the permanent aristocracy of wealth, of the 20 biggest fortunes on the 2013 Forbes list, 17 of them were self-made.
  • People yelled Show me the money! and screamed it at me all the time. It was a catchphrase everybody was hungry for. It was accepted because people think that when they look at professional actors and the obscene amounts of money they get. This was making fun of that. It wasn't mean-spirited.
    • Cuba Gooding Jr, American actor. From his interview in The Express (UK) newspaper, 18th September 1999
  • There is no justification in aspiring to become rich even for a good cause. The truth is that people are frightened of being poor because they have no faith in Him who promised to provide all things needful to those who seek the kingdom of God (cf. Matt. 6:33). It is this fear that spurs them, even when they are endowed with all things, and it prevents them from ever freeing themselves from this sickly and baneful desire. They go on amassing wealth, loading themselves with a worthless burden or, rather, enclosing themselves while still living in a most absurd kind of tomb.
  • Dead men are simply buried in the earth, but the intellect of a living pinchpenny is buried in the dust and earth of gold. Further, for those whose senses are in a healthy state this grave smells worse than the normal one, and the more earth one throws on it, the stronger the smell grows. For the festering wound of wretched persons buried in this way spreads, and its stench rises up to heaven, even up to the angels of God and to God Himself. They have become loathsome and repulsive, stinking on account of their folly, as David puts it (cf Ps. 38:5). Voluntary poverty - not undertaken to impress others - delivers men from this foul-smelling and deadly passion; and such poverty is precisely the 'poorness in spirit' that the Lord called blessed.
  • In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt.

H

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  • I am a capitalist, and after a 30-year career in capitalism... I'm not just in the top one percent, I'm in the top .01 percent of all earners. Today, I have come to share the secrets of our success, because rich capitalists like me have never been richer... How do we manage to grab an ever-increasing share of the economic pie every year? ... here's the dirty secret. There was a time in which the economics profession worked in the public interest, but in the neoliberal era, today, they work only for big corporations and billionaires... We could choose to enact economic policies that raise taxes on the rich, regulate powerful corporations or raise wages for workers... But neoliberal economists would warn that all of these policies would be a terrible mistake, because raising taxes always kills economic growth, and any form of government regulation is inefficient, and raising wages always kills jobs.
    Well, as a consequence of that thinking, over the last 30 years, in the USA alone, the top one percent has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown 900 billion dollars poorer, a pattern of widening inequality that has largely repeated itself across the world. And yet, as middle class families struggle to get by on wages that have not budged in about 40 years, neoliberal economists continue to warn that the only reasonable response to the painful dislocations of austerity and globalization is even more austerity and globalization.
The abundance I create spreads over all the lands. ~ The Hoe in Debate between the Hoe and the Plough
  • The growing economic power of the richest percentiles translated directly into increased political power, as they gained new influence over elections. In the USA, the collapse of unions as a result of neoliberal reforms has meant that corporations are able to outcompete labour in campaign financing. Their position was further strengthened in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs FEC that corporations have a constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising as an exercise of 'free speech'.
  • I hate the devotees of great wealth but I enjoy seeing the splendor that wealth can buy. And if I were wealthy, I'd live in a place with marble walls and marble floors, lapis lazulis ceilings and cloth-of-gold and I would have silver fountains in the courts, flinging an everlasting sheen of sparkling water in the air. Soft low music should breathe forever through the rooms and slim tigerish girls should glide through on softly falling feet, serving all the wants of me and my guests; girls with white bare limbs like molten gold and soft dreamy eyes.
  • Wealth changes hands—that is one of its peculiarities.
    • Elbert Hubbard. 'George Peabody' Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen (1916)
  • “Wealth tends to generate wealth,” he began.<br.>I gave a qualified assent. “If it does not instead give birth to folly.”

I

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Wealth belongs to God; man is only the temporary caretaker. A faithful caretaker will follow exactly the wishes of the one who has entrusted the wealth to him. And we, temporarily ruling over the wealth given to us, must rule over it according to the will of God. Let us not use it as a means of indulging our desires and passions, as a resource for eternal perdition. Let us use it for the good of mankind, which lives in need and suffering. ~ Ignatius Brianchaninov
  • Earthly wealth does not belong to us, as those who have never thought about this erroneously believe. Otherwise, it always and forever would remain in our possession. But it changes hands constantly, thereby proving that it is given only for us to watch over temporarily.
    • Ignatius Brianchaninov, The Field, as translated by Nicholas Kotar (Holy Trinity Publications, The Printshop of St Job of Pochaev, Jordanville, New York: 2016), p. 16
  • Wealth belongs to God; man is only the temporary caretaker. A faithful caretaker will follow exactly the wishes of the one who has entrusted the wealth to him. And we, temporarily ruling over the wealth given to us, must rule over it according to the will of God. Let us not use it as a means of indulging our desires and passions, as a resource for eternal perdition. Let us use it for the good of mankind, which lives in need and suffering.
    • Ignatius Brianchaninov, The Field, as translated by Nicholas Kotar (Holy Trinity Publications, The Printshop of St Job of Pochaev, Jordanville, New York: 2016), p. 16
  • Few rich men own their property. The property owns them.

J

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  • Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
  • Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.
  • They fill their houses through the plunder and losses of others, so that the saying of the philosophers may be fulfilled, 'Every rich man is unjust or the heir of an unjust one.' (Omnis dives aut iniquis aut iniqui haeres.)
  • The rich abound not so much in wealth as in injustice; for all riches being a spoliation of others are born of injustice.
Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. ~ Job
  • Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
    • Job, Book of Job 1:21
  • The question is not put how far extends
His piety, but what he yearly spends;
Quick, to the business; how he lives and eats;
How largely gives; how splendidly he treats;
How many thousand acres feed his sheep;
What are his rents; what servants does he keep?
The account is soon cast up; the judges rate
Our credit in the court by our estate.

K

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L

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For the first time in human history we have available the production technologies to create unprecedented abundance... to attain sustainability and community healing on a local and global scale. Whether we materialize them or not will depend on our capacity to cooperate with each other to consciously reinvent our money. ~ Bernard Lietaer
It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good... I want every man to have the chance, and I believe a black man is entitled to it, in which he can better his condition. When he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system. ~ Abraham Lincoln
That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built. ~ Abraham Lincoln
  • Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.
  • Wealth has never yet sacrificed itself on the altar of patriotism.
    • Robert M. La Follette Sr., "La Follette Fights for Higher War Tax", New York Times [4] (August 22, 1917). Also quoted in Fred Greenbaum, Robert Marion La Follette Twayne Publishers, (pg. 162).
  • Of a rich man who was niggardly he [Bion] said, That man does not own his estate, but his estate owns him.
  • ’Tis the worst curse, on this our social world,
    Fortune’s perpetual presence—wealth, which now
    Is like life’s paramount necessity.
  • One great evil of highly civilised society is, the immense distance between the rich and the poor; it leads, on either side, to a hardened selfishness. Where we know little, we care little; but the fact once admitted, that there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal, that we cannot reform for a time, or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.
  • Almost all of us want to be richer than we are, even if we are very rich indeed. To be sure, there are exceptions; saints, ascetics, those who travel light and will not add even the weight of a wallet, a few whose material ambitions are fully satisfied and who therefore truly want nothing further. But the rest of us want more than we have, and the specially thoughtful sometimes wonder whether there could ever come a time when we didn't. The crucial question, though, leaving out of consideration the exempted categories, is: what are we willing to do to increase our wealth?
    • Bernard Levin, "Do You Seriously Want to Be Swindled?" The Times, March 23, 1989
  • The Great Mother archetype was very important in the Western world from the dawn of prehistory throughout the pre-Indo-European time periods, as it still is in many traditional cultures today. But this archetype has been violently repressed in the West for at least 5,000 years starting with the Indo-European invasions - reinforced by the anti-Goddess view of Judeo-Christianity, culminating with three centuries of witch hunts - all the way to the Victorian era.
    In Victorian times - at the apex of the repression of the Great Mother - a Scottish schoolmaster named Adam Smith noticed a lot of greed and scarcity around him and assumed that was how all "civilized" societies worked. Smith... created modern economics, which can be defined as a way of allocating scarce resources through the mechanism of individual, personal greed... The Great Mother... specifically symbolizes planet Earth - fertility, nature, the flow of abundance in all aspects of life. Someone who has assimilated the Great Mother archetype trusts in the abundance of the universe. It's when you lack trust that you want a big bank account. ...We have been living for a long time under the belief that we need to create scarcity to create value... Fear of scarcity creates greed and hoarding, which in turn creates the scarcity that was feared. Whereas cultures that embody the Great Mother are based on abundance and generosity.
  • For the first time in human history we have available the production technologies to create unprecedented abundance. All this converges into an extraordinary opportunity to combine the hardware of our technologies of abundance and the software of archetypal shifts. Such a combination has never been available at this scale or at this speed: it enables us to consciously design money to work for us, instead of us for it. I propose that we choose to develop money systems that will enable us to attain sustainability and community healing on a local and global scale. These objectives are in our grasp within less than one generation's time. Whether we materialize them or not will depend on our capacity to cooperate with each other to consciously reinvent our money.
  • It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat, just what might happen to any poor man's son! I want every man to have the chance, and I believe a black man is entitled to it, in which he can better his condition. When he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.
  • None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the working people. Let them beware of prejudice, working division and hostility among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer, was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor — property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
    • Abraham Lincoln, reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association (21 March 1864), Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 259-260 1:566
  • Nothing is truly great which it is great to despise; wealth, honor, reputation, absolute power—anything in short which has a lot of external trappings—can never seem supremely good to the wise man because it is no small good to despise them. People who could have these advantages if they chose but disdain them out of magnanimity are admired much more than those who actually possess them.
    • Longinus, On the Sublime, Ch. 7, Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism: Translations and Interpretations, F. Ungar Pub. Co., 1974, p. 195

M

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  • Infinite riches in a little room.
  • But wealth is a great means of refinement; and it is a security for gentleness, since it removes disturbing anxieties.
    • Ik Marvel, Reveries of a Bachelor (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1850), Third Reverie: Over his Cigar, III, p. 126
  • Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where theives break through and steal:
    But lay up for your selves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where theives do not break through nor steal.
    For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
  • WEALTH. Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
    • H. L. Mencken (1880–1956), American journalist and critic. From 'maxims' section in, A Book of Burlesques (1920)
  • People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.

N

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  • People who are rich want to be richer, but what's the difference? You can't take it with you. The toys get different, that's all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It's all relative.
    • Martina Navratilova, Czechoslovakian-American tennis player. Quotation from her autobiography, Martina (1985)
  • The other of the rich men said to him "Master, what good thing shall I do and live?" He said to him "Man, perform the law and the prophets." He answered him "I have performed them." He said to him "Go, sell all that thou hast and divide it to the poor, and come, follow me." But the rich man began to scratch his head, and it pleased him not. And the Lord said to him "How can you say 'I have performed the law and the prophets'? seeing that it is written in the law 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,' and look, many of your brothers, sons of Abraham, are clad with dung, dying for hunger, and your house is full of much goods, and there goes out therefrom nought at all unto them." And he turned and said to Simon his disciple, sitting by him, "Simon, son of John, it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the kingdom of the heavens.

P

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  • I hate almost all rich people, but I think I'd be darling at it.
    • Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), American writer, editor and poet. From her interview for The Paris Review, reprinted in Writers at Work, First Series (1958)
  • Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
  • Instruct those who are rich in the present system of things not to be arrogant, and to place their hope, not on uncertain riches, but on God, who richly provides us with all the things we enjoy. Tell them to work at good, to be rich in fine works, to be generous, ready to share.
  • We must mention the higher, nobler wealth, which does not belong to all, but to truly noble and divinely gifted men. This wealth is bestowed by wisdom through the doctrines and principles of ethic, logic and physic, and from these spring the virtues, which rid the soul of its proneness to extravagance, and engender the love of contentment and frugality, which will assimilate it to God. For God has no wants, He needs nothing, being in Himself all-sufficient to Himself, while the fool has many wants, ever thirsting for what is not there, longing to gratify his greedy and insatiable desire, which he fans into a blaze like a fire and brings both great and small within its reach. But the man of worth has few wants, standing midway between mortality and immortality.
    • Philo, On The Virtues, pp. 167-169
  • Even the great king will appear as the poorest of men if compared with a single virtue. For his wealth is soulless, buried deep in store-houses and recesses of the earth, but the wealth of virtue lies in the sovereign part of the soul, and the purest part of existence.
    • Philo, On The Virtues, p. 213
  • If you had enough money, you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes.

R

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  • If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not even struggling for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion—prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: this is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me. Then he wonders why he’s unhappy.
  • The Gods have not ordained hunger to be our death: even to the well-fed man comes death in varied shape,
    The riches of the liberal never waste away, while he who will not give finds none to comfort him,
    The man with food in store who, when the needy comes in miserable case begging for bread to eat,
    Hardens his heart against him, when of old finds not one to comfort him.

    Bounteous is he who gives unto the beggar who comes to him in want of food, and the feeble,
    Success attends him in the shout of battle. He makes a friend of him in future troubles,
    No friend is he who to his friend and comrade who comes imploring food, will offer nothing.

    Let the rich satisfy the poor implorer, and bend his eye upon a longer pathway,
    Riches come now to one, now to another, and like the wheels of cars are ever rolling,
    The foolish man wins food with fruitless labour: that food – I speak the truth – shall be his ruin,
    He feeds no trusty friend, no man to love him. All guilt is he who eats with no partaker.
  • To be wealthy has never been a goal of mine. You can only spend so much and you cannot take it with you, so for me leaving a good body of work is more important.
    • Philip Andre Mickey Rourke, Jr., American actor and screenwriter. Live magazine, The Mail on Sunday newspaper, 8th November 2009; Interviewed by Chris Sullivan
  • Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down.
  • There is no Wealth but Life.

S

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  • Wealth is not the same as income. If you make good income each year and spend it all, you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.
  • Consider wealth as an unending misfortune because of the troubles of acquiring, protecting and losing it. Those whose minds are attached to wealth on account of their distracted state have no opportunity for liberation from the suffering of mundane existence.
    • Santideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, V. Wallace and B. Wallace, trans. (1997), § 8.79
  • To possess at the outset so much that we can live comfortably, even if only for our own person and without a family, and can live really independently, that is, without working, is a priceless advantage. For it means exemption and immunity from the poverty and trouble attaching to the life of man, and thus emancipation from universal drudgery, the natural lot of earthly mortals. Only under this favour and patronage of fate is a man born truly free; for only so is he really sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and is able to say every morning ‘The day is mine’. And for the very same reason, the difference between the man with a thousand a year and one with a hundred is infinitely less than that between the former and the man who has nothing. But inherited wealth attains its highest value when it has comes to the man who is endowed with mental powers of a high order and who pursues activities that are hardly compatible with earning money. For he is then doubly endowed by fate and can now live for his genius.
    • Arthur Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 350
  • O, my God! withhold from me the wealth to which tears, and sighs, and curses cleave. Better none at all than wealth like that!
    • Christian Scriver, Gotthold's Emblems (1667), translated by Robert Menzies (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1862), VIII. The Money Scales, p. 45
  • The proper amount of wealth is that which neither descends to poverty nor is far distant from it.
  • Divitiae enim apud sapientem virum in servitute sunt, apud stultum in imperio.
    • Wealth is the slave of a wise man, the master of a fool.
  • “The woman’s insane. You might have warned me about that.”
    “Rich people don’t go insane, Dennis—at most they become eccentric.”
  • We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
  • The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
    • George Bernard Shaw, Letter, 25 Sept. 1899, in Collected Letters, vol.2, in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, p. 791
  • Never get involved in a venture with a man who inherited his money and didn't earn any himself. He'll assume he's smarter than you are, just because he's rich and you're not, and he'll expect you to bow down to his greatness because for all his life people have.
  • Many sin for love of gain, he who desires riches silences his conscience. Just as the stake is settled between two stones, so sin wedges itself between buying and selling. The house of him who does not keep himself firmly in the fear of the Lord will soon be knocked to the ground.
    • Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus chapter 27 : 1-3
  • Better a poor man healthy and fit, than a rich man tormented in body. Health and vigor are worth more than gold, a robust body, more than great wealth. No riches are preferable to physical wellbeing, and no joy is greater than a cheerful heart. Death is better than a wretched life and eternal rest preferable to lasting sickness.
    • Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus chapter 30 : 14-17
  • When you experience abundance, remember the days of famine; when you enjoy riches, think of poverty and misery. Time slips by between morning and evening, all things pass quickly before the Lord.
    • Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus chapter 18 : 25-26
  • Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
    • Samuel Smiles, 19th C Scottish author and reformer. 'Money: Its Use and Abuse', Self-Help (1856), Chapter 10
  • Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. They are immense fabrics, which it requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies.
    • Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part 4, Chapter 1
  • I'm just a poor millionaire.
    • Delia Smith. From her television interview at Norwich City football Club, concerniong her ownership of the club, c. 2000
  • To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep absolutely sober.
    • Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946), American essayist and aphorist. 'In the World', Afterthoughts (1931)
  • It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
  • The rich is the one that rules over those of little means, and the borrower is servant to the man doing the lending.
  • No rich man is a patriot, no rich man is a friend. They have all only got one fatherland—the Ritz-Carlton; and one friend—the mistress they're promising to divorce their wives for.
  • It is a mere illusion that, above a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse.
  • Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

T

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  • Ploutos, no wonder mortals worship you:
You are so tolerant of their sins!
  • In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune, because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself.
  • That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
  • The rich man ... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.
  • Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
    • Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910), American author and humorist. 'More Maxims of Mark,' p. 945, Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, 1891-1910, Library of America (1992)

V

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  • I'm a very large creator of wealth, I like that. I like finding new companies and investing in them very early and seeing an enormous amount of wealth being generated.
    • Alberto Vilar, from his interview in The Sunday Times, 19th March 2000

W

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Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest. ~ Kate Douglas Wiggin
  • I wonder why rich people always grow fat—I suppose it's because there's nothing to worry them.
  • Though they suffer no restriction of choice, in reality even multi-millionaires soon reach the outer limits of purely personal gratification—which should be some satisfaction to the rest of us.
    • Alan Whicker, British interviewer, journalist and author. Within Whicker's World (1982)
  • The rich prided themselves upon their superiority to those who were less favored; but they had obtained their riches by violation of the law of God. They had neglected to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to deal justly, and to love mercy. They had sought to exalt themselves and to obtain the homage of their fellow creatures. ... They have sold their souls for earthly riches and enjoyments, and have not sought to become rich toward God. The result is, their lives are a failure; their pleasures are now turned to gall, their treasures to corruption.
  • The affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts and are central to any future prospect of retreating to safer environmental conditions.
  • What Jesus meant, was this. He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.’

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 864-67.
  • I have mental joys and mental health,
    Mental friends and mental wealth,
    I've a wife that I love and that loves me;
    I've all but riches bodily.
  • Since all the riches of this world
    May be gifts from the devil and earthly kings,
    I should suspect that I worshipped the devil
    If I thanked my God for worldly things.
  • But I have learned a thing or two; I know as sure as fate,
    When we lock up our lives for wealth, the gold key comes too late.
  • Midas-eared Mammonism, double-barrelled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this His universe to go.
  • Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
  • Las necedades del rico por sentencias pasan en el mundo.
  • Non esse cupidum, pecunia est; non esse emacem, vectigal est; contentum vero suis rebus esse, maximae sunt, certissimaeque divitiae.
    • Not to be avaricious is money; not to be fond of buying is a revenue; but to be content with our own is the greatest and most certain wealth of all.
    • Cicero, Paradoxa, 6. 3
  • Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
  • Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.
  • If your Riches are yours, why don't you take them with you to t'other world?
  • Who hath not heard the rich complain
    Of surfeits, and corporeal pain?
    He barr'd from every use of wealth,
    Envies the ploughman's strength and health.
    • John Gay, Fables (1727), The Cookmaid, Turnspit, and Ox
  • The ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general stock.
  • And to hie him home, at evening's close,
    To sweet repast, and calm repose.
    * * *
    From toil he wins his spirits light,
    From busy day the peaceful night;
    Rich, from the very want of wealth,
    In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.
    • Thomas Gray, Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vissisitude, line 87. Last two lines said to have been added by the Rev. William Mason, Gray's biographer
  • A little house well fill'd, a little land well till'd, and a little wife well will'd, are great riches.
    • Written in a copy of the Grete Herbal (1516). "A little farm well tilled, / A little barn well filled, / A little wife well willed— / Give me, give me." As adapted by James Hook in The Soldier's Return
  • Dame Nature gave him comeliness and health,
    And Fortune (for a passport) gave him wealth.
  • For wealth, without contentment, climbs a hill,
    To feel those tempests which fly over ditches.
  • It cannot be repeated too often that the safety of great wealth with us lies in obedience to the new version of the Old World axiom—Richesse oblige.
  • Base wealth preferring to eternal praise.
    • Homer, The Iliad, Book XXIII, line 368. Pope's translation
  • These riches are possess'd, but not enjoy'd!
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book IV, line 118. Pope's translation
  • Know from the bounteous heavens all riches flow;
    And what man gives, the gods by man bestow.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XVIII, line 26. Pope's translation
  • Imperat aut servit collecta pecunia cuique.
    • Riches either serve or govern the possessor.
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 10. 47
  • Omnis enim res,
    Virtus, fama, decus, divina, humanaque pulchris
    Divitiis parent.
    • For everything divine and human, virtue, fame, and honor, now obey the alluring influence of riches.
    • Horace, Satires, II. 3. 94
  • Et genus et virtus, nisi cum re, vilior alga est.
    • Noble descent and worth, unless united with wealth, are esteemed no more than seaweed.
    • Horace, Satires, II. 5. 8
  • And you prate of the wealth of nations, as if it were bought and sold,
    The wealth of nations is men, not silk and cotton and gold.
  • We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
  • Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home
    Can be contented to applaud myself, * * * with joy
    To see how plump my bags are and my barns.
    • Ben Jonson, Every Man Out of His Humour, Act I, scene 1
  • Private credit is wealth, public honour is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports his flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth.
    • Junius, Letter 42. Jan. 30, 1771
  • Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa
    Fortuna.
    • Common sense among men of fortune is rare.
    • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), VIII. 73
  • Dives fieri qui vult
    Et cito vult fieri.
    • He who wishes to become rich wishes to become so immediately.
    • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), XIV. 176
  • Facile est momento quo quis velit, cedere possessione magnæ fortunæ; facere et parare eam, difficile atque arduum est.
    • It is easy at any moment to resign the possession of a great fortune; to acquire it is difficult and arduous.
    • Livy, Annales, XXIV. 22
  • The rich man's son inherits cares;
    The bank may break, the factory burn,
    A breath may burst his bubble shares,
    And soft, white hands could hardly earn
    A living that would serve his turn.
  • Our Lord commonly giveth Riches to such gross asses, to whom he affordeth nothing else that is good.
  • You often ask me, Priscus, what sort of person I should be, if I were to become suddenly rich and powerful. Who can determine what would be his future conduct? Tell me, if you were to become a lion, what sort of a lion would you be?
    • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book XII, Epigram 92
  • Those whom we strive to benefit
    Dear to our hearts soon grow to be;
    I love my Rich, and I admit
    That they are very good to me.
    Succor the poor, my sisters,—I
    While heaven shall still vouchsafe me health
    Will strive to share and mollify
    The trials of abounding wealth.
  • The little sister of the Poor
    * * * *
    The Poor, and their concerns, she has
    Monopolized, because of which
    It falls to me to labor as
    A Little Brother of the Rich.
  • Let none admire
    That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
    Deserve the precious bane.
  • I am rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
  • Opum furiata cupido.
    • The ungovernable passion for wealth.
    • Ovid, Fasti, I. 211
  • Effodiuntur opes irritamenta malorum.
    • Riches, the incentives to evil, are dug out of the earth.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 140
  • Embarras des richesse.
    • Embarrassment of riches.
    • Title of a French Comedy played at the Haymarket, London (Oct. 9, 1738). Translation by Ozell
  • Opes invisæ merito sunt forti viro,
    Quia dives arca veram laudem intercipit.
    • Riches are deservedly despised by a man of honor, because a well-stored chest intercepts the truth.
    • Phaedrus, Fables, IV. 12. 1
  • Nemini credo, qui large blandus est dives pauperi.
    • I trust no rich man who is officiously kind to a poor man.
    • Plautus, Aulularia, II. 2. 30
  • Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace;
    If not, by any means get wealth and place.
  • What riches give us let us then inquire:
    Meat, fire, and clothes. What more? Meat, clothes, and fire.
    Is this too little?
  • All gold and silver rather turn to dirt!
    As 'tis no better reckon'd, but of those
    Who worship dirty gods.
  • If thou art rich, thou art poor;
    For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
    Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
    And death unloads thee.
  • Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends,
    An incarnation of fat dividends.
  • No, he was no such charlatan—
    Count de Hoboken Flash-in-the-Pan—
    Full of gasconade and bravado,
    But a regular, rich Don Rataplane,
    Santa Claus de la Muscavado,
    Senor Grandissimo Bastinado!
    His was the rental of half Havana
    And all Matanzas; and Santa Ana,
    Rich as he was, could hardly hold
    A candle to light the mines of gold
    Our Cuban owned.
  • The man is mechanically turned, and made for getting…. It was very prettily said that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it
  • If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
  • Repente dives nemo factus est bonus.
    • No good man ever became suddenly rich.
    • Syrus, Maxims
  • He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he be exalted above his neighbors because he hath more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine!
  • Can wealth give happiness? look round and see
    What gay distress! what splendid misery!
    Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour,
    The mind annihilates, and calls for more.
  • Much learning shows how little mortals know;
    Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VI, line 519

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert's Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • The rich are like beasts of burden, carrying treasure all day, and at the night of death unladen; they carry to their grave only the bruises and marks of their toil.
  • Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
  • How many threadbare souls are to be found under silken cloaks and gowns!
  • Worldly wealth is the devil's bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches recede, in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase.
  • It is not the fact that a man has riches which keeps him from the kingdom of heaven, but the fact that riches have him.
  • There is a burden of care in getting riches, fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning them.
  • Get rich, if you will — you take great risks. But Christianity does not say to any man, You must be worth only so much, extend your business only so far. It says, Use your riches for the glory of God. If they once usurp His place, woe to you!
  • If by the consecration of my earthly possessions to some extent, I can make the Christian character practically more lovely, and illustrate, in my own case, that the highest enjoyments here are promoted by the free use of the good things intrusted to us, what so good use can I make of them?
  • But Christian faith knows that wealth means responsibility, and that responsibility may come to mean only heavy arrears of sin.
  • Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they to God's word? Yea, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health, or to the gifts of the mind, such as understanding, skill, wisdom? Yet men toil for them day and night, and take no rest. Therefore our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom He gives nothing else.
  • If you will be rich, you must be content to pay the price of falling into temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in perdition; and if that price be too high to pay, then you must be content with the quiet valleys of existence, where alone it is well with us; kept out of the inheritance, but having instead God for your portion — your all-sufficient and everlasting portion—peace and quietness and rest in Christ.
  • Nature does not conquer the world to God. It never has. It never will. In America, with its vast abounding wealth, its grand expanse of prairie, its reach of river, and its exuberant productiveness, there is danger that our riches will draw us away from God, and fasten us to earth; that they will make us not only rich, but mean; not only wealthy, but wicked. The grand corrective is the cross of Christ, seen in the sanctuary where the life and light of God are exhibited, and where the reverberation of the echoes from the great white throne are heard.

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

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James H. Billington; Library of Congress (2010). Platt, Suzy. ed. Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486472881. 
  • "I was told", continued Egremont, "that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension".
    • Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, or, The Two Nations, ed. Thom Braun, book 4, chapter 8, p. 299 (1980). First published in 1845
  • This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.
    • John F. Kennedy, State of the Union address, January 14, 1963. The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, p. 13. Inscription on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.
  • I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.
    • Abraham Lincoln, speech at New Haven, Connecticut, March 6, 1860; in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 4, p. 24

See also

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