Quotes About Wealth

Was it true that Mr. Rask was omnipotently rich? Was he really still a bachelor? Why on earth? Did he ever go out? What were the tastes and pleasures of such a unique man?

I am a financier in a city ruled by financiers. My father was a financier in a city ruled by industrialists.

Walking around Wall Street during the weekend, one gets the impression that the world's affairs have been settled once and for all, that the age of work is finally over and that humanity has moved on to its next stage.

In Haiti, untitled rural and urban real estate holdings are together worth some 5.2 billion. To put that sum in context, it is four times the total of all the assets of all the legally operating companies in Haiti, nine times the value of all assets owned by the government, and 158 times the value of all foreign direct investment in Haiti's recorded history to 1995.

The man of affluence is not in fact more happy than the possessor of a bare competency, unless, in addition to his wealth, the end of his life be fortunate. We often see misery dwelling in the midst of splendour, whilst real happiness is found in humbler stations.

Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.

It is from work that men are rich in flocks and wealthy, and a working man is much dearer to the immortals

Even where the Faith is preserved men pursue wealth and power inordinately. Where the Faith is lost they pursue nothing else.

I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

In the perfect Capitalist State there would be no food available for the non-owner save when he was actually engaged in Production, and that absurdity would, by quickly ending all human lives save those of the owners, put a term to the arrangement.

A decade of self-aggrandisement, since his daughter flashed her cunny at the king, has made Boleyn rich and settled and confident.

And they say [money's] the root of all evil. Well, Protestants say that. Catholics know better.

Jane is shaking. 'They are too much burdened with taxes.' The king leans forward. 'The burdens of tax do not rest on the shoulders of labourers, or small husbandmen. Dives, the rich man, knows and has always known how to pass off his interests as the interests of Lazarus, the beggar.

The old marchioness had him tracing down bed hangings and carpets for her. Send that. Be here. To her, all the world was a menial. If she wanted a lobster or a sturgeon, she ordered it up, and if she wanted good taste she ordered it in the same way. The marchioness would run her hand over Florentine silks, making little squeaks of pleasure. "You bought it, Master Cromwell," she would say. "And very beautiful it is. Your next task is to work out how we pay for it.

He cannot quite accept that real property cannot be changed into money with the same speed and ease with which he changes a wafer into the body of Christ.

Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.

He thinks of making his fortune. We all know that money sticks to yours hands. No, It passes through them, alas.

The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys.

somehow, everybody is poorer except the priests.

The poor labourer owns his sleep and his stool, and can sell his piss to the fuller, whereas the king's piss and stool is the property of all England...should his bowel be loose, its product is taken away in a bowl under an embroidered cloth. They can only judge what is within him, by what comes out: a pity he is not made of glass.

Henry says, 'Her Grace will withdraw.' Jane is shaking. 'They are too much burdened with taxes.' The king leans forward. 'The burdens of tax do not rest on the shoulders of labourers, or small husbandmen. Dives, the rich man, knows and has always known how to pass off his interests as the interests of Lazarus, the beggar.

The Commons. God rot them. ... They never think higher than their pockets.

The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.