Wealth

"The acquisition of wealth is not due to hard work alone, or the Africans working as slaves in America and the West Indies would have been the wealthiest group in the world."

"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."

"Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down."

"There is no Wealth but Life."

"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."

"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."

"O, my God! withhold from me the wealth to which tears, and sighs, and curses cleave. Better none at all than wealth like that!"

"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."

"“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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing."

"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."

"I'm just a poor millionaire."

"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."

"It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people."

"Riches certainly make themselves wings."

"Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour."

"The rich is the one that rules over those of little means, and the borrower is servant to the man doing the lending."

"He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent."

"He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, And considereth not that poverty shall come upon him."

"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."

"Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich."

"χρήματα μὲν δαίμων καὶ παγκάκῳ ἀνδρὶ δίδωσιν, Κύρν᾽: ἀρετῆς δ᾽ ὀλίγοις ἀνδράσι μοῖρ᾽ ἕπεται."

"Ploutos, no wonder mortals worship you:"

"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."

"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."

"I wonder why rich people always grow fat—I suppose it's because there's nothing to worry them."

"As I always say, keep your friends rich, and your enemies rich, and then find out which is which."

"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."

"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 and are central to any future prospect of retreating to safer environmental conditions."

"Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest."

"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.’"

"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."