Quotes About Wealth

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.

A man's riches are based on what he can do without.

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.

As far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched.

The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course _à la mode_.

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.

for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly;

Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Thu luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.

No puedo creer que nuestro sistema industrial sea el mejor modo por el que podamos vestirnos. La condición de los obreros se parece cada día más a la de los ingleses y no hay que sorprenderse, ya que, por lo que he oído y observado, el objetivo principal no es que la humanidad esté bien y honestamente vestida, sino, indudablemente, que las corporaciones se enriquezcan.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

I speak to] the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And

Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.

Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live—that is, keep comfortably warm—and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as i implied before, they are cooked, à la mode.

This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.