Quotes About Wealth

O problema da indumentária é aliás enorme para aqueles que desejam aparentar o que não têm, porque é quase sempre o melhor meio de vir a possuí-lo mais tarde.

In these days rich families stand between the danger of impoverishing their children if they have too many, or of extinguishing their names if they have too few, — a singular result of the Code which Napoleon never thought of.

No one has understood this opium of poverty. The lottery, all-powerful fairy of the poor, bestowed the gift of magic hopes. The turn of the wheel which opens to the gambler a vista of gold and happiness, lasts no longer than a flash of lightning, but the lottery gave five days' existence to that magnificent flash. What social power can to-day, for the sum of five sous, give us five days' happiness and launch us ideally into all the joys of civilization?

Virtue, socially speaking, is the companion of a comfortable life, and comes only with education.

Tive agora a noção do que é ser pobre, ao desejar ter fortuna para dar ao meu filho

La avaricia empieza cuando se acaba la pobreza

Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait. The secret of a great fortune made without apparent cause is soon forgotten, if the crime is committed in a respectable way.

mere boy, who dances badly; besides, he has no fortune. And, after all, papa, none of these people have titles. I want, at least, to be a countess like my mother.

Time has become the costliest commodity, so no one can afford the lavish extravagance of going home to-morrow morning and getting up late. Hence, there is no second soiree now but at the houses of women rich enough to entertain, and since July 1830 such women may be counted in Paris.

En las alturas, la Nobleza y el Poder; abajo, el Comercio y el Dinero; dos esferas sociales que en todas partes son perpetuamente enemigas; por ello es difícil adivinar cuál de las dos ciudades odiaba más a su rival.

Balzac's father Bernard-François Balssa, was one of eleven children from a poor family in Tarn, in the south of France. The author's mother, Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in Paris. Her family's wealth was a considerable factor in the match. She was eighteen at the time of the wedding and Bernard-François fifty.

That cursed ball! All the world thinks I am worth millions. Yet Lourdois had a look that was not natural; there's a snake in the grass somewhere.

More ideas surged through her head in one quarter of an hour than she had ever had since she came into the world. "Mamma," she said, "my cousin will never bear the smell of a tallow candle; suppose we buy a wax one?" And she darted, swift as a bird, to get the five-franc piece which she had just received for her monthly expenses. "Here, Nanon," she cried, "quick!

Corruption has come to him with fortune, — as it always does!" he said to himself

Men without means ought to be perfect," added Moreau, not suspecting the profundity of that cruel sentence.

Honoré de Balzac

What does Madame Schinner say to all this?" pursued the count; "for I believe you married, out of love, the beautiful Adelaide de Rouville, the protegee of old Admiral de Kergarouet; who, by the bye, obtained for you the order for the Louvre ceilings through his nephew, the Comte de Fontaine.

I promised myself that I would go through everything thoroughly; I would try the ceilings, and floors, and walls, and cornices to discover all the gold, hoarded with such passionate greed by a Dutch miser worthy of a Rembrandt's brush. In all the course of my professional career I have never seen such impressive signs of the eccentricity of avarice.

El contraste entre un lujo exagerado y una exagerada miseria es lo que impresiona antes que nada.

Abbi cura di tutto! Me ne renderai conto laggiù", dimostrando con quest'ultima parola che il cristianesimo deve essere la religione degli avari.

You are so unlucky as to walk off with something or other belonging to somebody else, and they exhibit you as a curiosity in the Place du Palais-de-Justice; you steal a million, and you are pointed out in every salon as a model of virtue. And you pay thirty millions for the police and the courts of justice, for the maintenance of law and order! A pretty slate of things it is!

Le baptême de la Ligne lui fit perdre beaucoup de préjugés ; il s'aperçut que le meilleur moyen d'arriver à la fortune était, dans les régions intertropicales, aussi bien qu'en Europe, d'acheter et de vendre des hommes.

Corruption is powerful in the world: talent is scarce. So corruption is the instrument of swarming mediocrity, and you will feel its point everywhere. You will see wives whose husbands have six thousand francs a year, all told, spend more than ten thousand on a dress. You will see officials with a salary of twelve hundred francs buy estates.

La cuestión del vestido es, por otra parte, de gran importancia para quienes quieren aparentar que tienen lo que no tienen, porque es a menudo el mejor medio de poseerlo más adelante.