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wealth quotes

  • I have had wealth, rank and power, but, if these were all I had, how wretched I should be.

    - BrianWilson Aldiss
    Attributed last words.

  • Salud, Dinero, Amor†yTiempo. Health,Wealth, Love†and Time to enjoy them.

    -Anonymous
    Traditional Spanish wedding toast.

  • The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it creates, but in what it prevents. It prevents the rule of wealththe religion of gold. This is the obvious and natural idol of the Anglo-Saxon† From this our aristocracy preserves us.

    -Walter Bagehot
      The English Constitution, ch.4,'The House of Lords'.

  • Therichman'swealthishisstrongcity: thedestructionof the poor is their poverty.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs10:15.

  • Entre nosotros el dinero ha hecho desaparecer ma  s preocupaciones de familia que en las viejas sociedades europeas. En e  stas hay lo que llaman aristocracia de dinero, que jama  s alcanza con su poder†a hacer olvidar enteramente la oscuridad de la cuna, al paso que en Chile†todo va cediendo su puesto a la riqueza. Among us, money has dissolved more worries than among ancient European societies. The latter have what they call the moneyed aristocracy, which, despite all its power, never gets to forget its humble origins; on the other hand, in Chile everything yields to wealth.

    - Alberto Blest Gana
      Mart|  n Rivas, ch.2 (translated1918).

  • Wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.

    -Thomas Carlyle
      Signs of the Times.

  • Where Plenty smilesalas! she smiles for few, And those who taste not, yet behold her store, Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore, The wealth around them makes them doubly poor.

    - George Crabbe
      The Village, bk.1, l.136^9.

  • She's all states, and all princes I, Nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'The Sun Rising', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • For God's sake, hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honour, or his grace, Or the King's real, or his stamped face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'The Canonization', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • Why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.

    -John Dryden
    Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.165^70.

  • The court he practised, not the courtier's art: Large was his wealth, but larger was his heart.

    -John Dryden
      Of the loyalist  James Butler, Duke of Ormond.  Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.825^6.

  • My wealth is health and perfect ease; My conscience clear my chief defence; I neither seek by bribes to please, Nor by deceit to breed offence. Thus do I live; thus will I die. Would all did so well as I!

    - Sir Edward Dyer
      'In Praise of a Contented Mind'.

  • And wealth abides not, it is but for a day.

    -Euripides
    Phoenissae, l.558.

  • The labor of women inthehouse, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way [they] are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

    -Gilman and Charlotte Perkins Stetson
      Women and Economics:  A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, ch.1.

  • and Ireally hopeno white person ever has causetowrite about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy

    -Nikki in full Yolande CorneliaGiovanni,Jr Giovanni
      Black Judgement,'Nikki^Rosa'.

  • Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

    - Oliver Goldsmith
      The Deserted Village, l.51^6.

  • Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour, The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.29^36.

  • A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.

    - Godfrey Harold Hardy
    A Mathematician's  Apology.

  • Wealth cannot make a life, but Love.

    - Robert Herrick
      'A Country Life:  To His Brother, M. Tho. Herrick'.

  • Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily lifewithout mingling with it, casts its wealthtoright and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.

    - Alexander Ivanovich Herzen
      Notebook entry, collected in Byloe i dumy (My Past and Thoughts), vol.3 (published1861^7, translated by Constance Garnett,1924).

  • Asthe Spanishproverbsays,'He, whowould bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,17  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

  • Sir, the insolence of wealth will creep out.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,18  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

  •   Yet I glory More in the cunning purchase of my wealth Than in the glad possession.

    - Ben Jonson
      Volpone, act1, sc.1.

  • I look forward to†a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint; its wealth with our wisdom; its power with our purpose.

    -John F(itzgerald) Kennedy
      Last major public speech,  Amherst College, 26 Oct.

  • If Enterprise is afoot,Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening toThrift; and if Enterprise is asleep,Wealth decays, whateverThrift may be doing.

    -John Maynard, 1st Baron Keynes (of Tilton)
      A  Treatise on Money.

  • The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitraryand inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

    -John Maynard, 1st Baron Keynes (of Tilton)
      The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

  • There is nothing like wealth for dulling desire.

    - Barry McGuigan
      In The Independent, 29 Dec.

  • Thus methinks should men of judgement frame Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade, And as their wealth increaseth, so enclose Infinite riches in a little room.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1589  The Jew of Malta (published1633), act1, sc.1.

  • The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces and the more his production increases in powerand extent.The worker becomes anevercheaper commodity the more good he creates. The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase in value of the world of things. Labour does not only create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and indeed in the same proportion as it produces goods.

    - Karl Heinrich Marx
      Collected in T B Bottomore (trans and ed) Early Writings (1964), p.121.

  • Unlike the Laws of Production, those of Distribution are partly of human institution, since the manner in which wealth is distributed in any given society, depends on the statutes or usages therein obtaining.

    -John Stuart Mill
      Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

  • I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on. I know not why it should be a matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representative of wealth.

    -John Stuart Mill
      Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

  • Les re  publiques finissent par le luxe; les monarchies, par la pauvrete  . Republics end by wealth; monarchies end by poverty.

    -Bre'  de et de
      De l'esprit des lois, vol.7, ch.4.

  • Il en est de la luxure comme de l'avarice: elle augmente sa soif par l'acquisition des tre  sors. The same rule applies for lust, as for avarice: it increases its thirst by the acquisition of wealth.

    -Bre'  de et de
      De l'esprit des lois, vol.16, ch.6.

  • Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true lifethe true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudityof youth, disdaining rivalry; saneand healthyand vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new- found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

    - Frank Benjamin Franklin Norris
      Of Chicago. The Pit, ch.2.

  • Labour is the Father and active principle of Wealth, as lands are the Mother.

    - Sir William Petty
      Treatise ofTaxes.

  • For I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls, proclaiming as Igo,Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state.

    -Plato
    Apology, 30b (translated by H Tredennick).

  • Wealth, in a commercial age, is made up largely of promises.

    - (Nathan) Roscoe Pound
      An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, ch.6.

  • In every case, agricultural as well as manufacturing profits are lowered bya rise in the price of raw produce, if it be accompanied bya rise of wages_ The natural tendency of profits istofall; for inthe progress of society and wealth, the additional quantity of food required is obtained by the sacrifice of more and more labour.

    - David Ricardo
      Principles of Political Economy andTaxation.

  • I was born into wealth and there was nothing I could do about it. It was there like food or air.

    - David Rockefeller
      In Merchants and Masterpieces,WETA TV broadcast, 31 Dec.

  • We have the menthe skillthe wealthand above all, the will† We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

    - Franklin D(elano) Roosevelt
      'Fireside chat'radio broadcast, 29 Dec.

  • There is no wealth but life.

    -John Ruskin
      Unto this Last, essay 4.

  • The cold metal of economic theory is in Marx's pages immersed in such a wealth of steaming phrases as to acquire a temperature not naturally its own.

    -Joseph Alois Schumpeter
      Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, p.21.

  • We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Morell to Lexy. Candida, act1.

  • Titles are tinsel, power a corrupter, glorya bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Declaration of Rights, article 27.

  • Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'StanzasWritten in Dejection, near Naples'.

  • Come sleep,O sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low.

    - Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
    Astrophel and Stella, sonnet 39.

  • We cannot not sayhow muchwealththereisina country till we know how it is shared among its inhabitants.

    - Henry Sidgwick
      Principles of Political Economy.

  • Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me. All I ask, the heaven above, And the road below me.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.1,'TheVagabond', stanza 4.

  • There is no road to wealth so easyand respectable as that of matrimony.

    - Anthony Trollope
      DoctorThorne, ch.16.

  • You cannot be pro-jobs and anti-government at the same time.You cannot love employees and despise employers.You cannot redistribute wealth that you never created. No goose, no golden egg.

    - Paul Efthemios Tsongas
      Quoted in the Los AngelesTimes,19 Feb.

  • Ja"   leider desn mac nicht ges|"n, Das guot und wertlich e"  re Und gotes hulde me"  re Zesamene in ein herze komen. It is sadly impossible For wealth and a good name, along with God's favour, to be united in one heart.

    -Walther Von derVogelweide
    c.1195  'Ich sass u"   f eime steine', l.16^19.

  • Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beautyand rustic health.

    -John Greenleaf Whittier
      'Maud Muller', l.3^4.

  •   Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness.We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour', complete poem (published1807).

  • The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazedand gazedbut little thought What wealth the show to me had brought.

    -William Wordsworth
      'I wandered lonely as a cloud', stanza 3 (published1807).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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