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105 quotes that mention money and wealth in so many words. Each one is checked against the book it comes from.
Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise
Beware of little expences
Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty and supped with Infamy.
Creditors have better memories than debtors
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune
Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Love your life, poor as it is.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
He who is satisfied with his lot is rich
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
For the love of money is the root of all evil
Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
All that glisters is not gold
Who steals my purse steals trash.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.
The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.
Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from fortune.
Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she smiles.
Nature makes merit but fortune sets it to work.
Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.
Avarice is more opposed to economy than to liberality.
Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.
Many people despise, but few know how to bestow wealth.
Our wisdom is no less at the mercy of Fortune than our goods.
Fortune makes visible our virtues or our vices, as light does objects.
Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also!
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.
Time is waste of money.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
ABASEMENT, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.
ABSENTEE, n. A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.
ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.
AIR, n. A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
ARCHITECT, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician’s forecast of the disease by the patient’s pulse and purse.
DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.
EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.
EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
FRIENDLESS, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
GOUT, n. A physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation tax, or poll-tax.
KLEPTOMANIAC, n. A rich thief.
MAUSOLEUM, n. The final and funniest folly of the rich.
MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
MONEY, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. An evidence of culture and a passport to polite society. Supportable property.
MOUSQUETAIRE, n. A long glove covering a part of the arm. Worn in New Jersey. But “mousquetaire” is a mighty poor way to spell muskeeter.
NOBLEMAN, n. Nature’s provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.
OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant “own,” and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.
OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.
PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.
PHILANTHROPIST, n. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanished opportunity.
QUOTIENT, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another—usually about as many times as it can be got there.
RESPONSIBILITY, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience. It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine, and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat witch of the Dismal Swamp.
Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring though timidity.
The moderation of those who are happy arises from the calm which good fortune bestows upon their temper.
Those who think they have merit persuade themselves that they are honoured by being unhappy, in order to persuade others and themselves that they are worthy to be the butt of fortune.
Whatever difference there appears in our fortunes, there is nevertheless a certain compensation of good and evil which renders them equal.
Whatever great advantages nature may give, it is not she alone, but fortune also that makes the hero.
The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes.
The most deceitful persons spend their lives in blaming deceit, so as to use it on some great occasion to promote some great interest.
Folly follows us at all stages of life. If one appears wise ‘tis but because his folly is proportioned to his age and fortune.
Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others are often causes of that bravery so vaunted among men.
We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to gain glory, and this makes brave men show more tact and address in avoiding death, than rogues show in preserving their fortunes.
Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants: it holds commerce together; and we do not pay because it is just to pay debts, but because we shall thereby more easily find people who will lend.
All those who pay the debts of gratitude cannot thereby flatter themselves that they are grateful.
Lucky people are bad hands at correcting their faults; they always believe that they are right when fortune backs up their vice or folly.
Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many people show gratitude for trifling, but there is hardly one who does not show ingratitude for great favours.
Moderation is made a virtue to limit the ambition of the great; to console ordinary people for their small fortune and equally small ability.
There are persons fated to be fools, who commit follies not only by choice, but who are forced by fortune to do so.
To be a great man one should know how to profit by every phase of fortune.
Fortune appears so blind to none as to those to whom she has done no good.
We should manage fortune like our health, enjoy it when it is good, be patient when it is bad, and never resort to strong remedies but in an extremity.
Fortune sometimes uses our faults to exalt us, and there are tiresome people whose deserts would be ill rewarded if we did not desire to purchase their absence.
When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.
Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken, there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future.
Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations, others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.
To fulfil a duty is still always to feel it as a debt, for it is never quite satisfying to oneself.
The greatest piece of good fortune is that which corrects our deficiencies and redeems our mistakes.
Faith is private capital, kept in one’s own house. There are public savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not been quite in vain.
Everything of an abstract or symbolic nature, as soon as it is challenged by realities, ends by consuming them and itself. So credit consumes both money and itself.
A man may live never so retired a life but he becomes a debtor or a creditor before he is aware of it.
If anyone meets us who owes us a debt of gratitude, it immediately crosses our mind. How often can we meet some one to whom we owe gratitude, without thinking of it!
For all other Arts we must make some allowance; but to Greek Art alone we are always debtors.
Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary pocket-money at court; where, by custom and consent, it has obtained such a currency, that it is no longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment.
When the old clipped money was called in for a new coinage in King William’s time, to prevent the like for the future, they stamped on the edges of the crown pieces these words, et decus et tutamen. That is exactly the case of good breeding.
The Duc de Sully observes very justly, in his Memoirs, that nothing contributed more to his rise, than that prudent economy which he had observed from his youth, and by which he had always a sum of money beforehand, in case of emergencies.
Take care always to form your establishment so much within your income as to leave a sufficient fund for unexpected contingencies and a prudent liberality. There is hardly a year, in any man’s life, in which a small sum of ready money may not be employed to great advantage.
Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket”—which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention;” but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and—watch that basket”
Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.