quotations about wealth
Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a large one.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Nought is there in wealth
That serves as bulwark 'gainst the subtle stealth
Of Destiny and Doom.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
Some people who have a lot of money like to show it off. They buy large houses, expensive cars, and all the toys you can imagine. But others keep their affluence on the down low. They don't look any different from anyone else, but they have some serious cash stashed away. These folks have what is known as stealth wealth. They are worth way more than they appear to be, and they often manage to retire early or follow their dreams in some other way that surprises the people around them -- people who never realized they had that kind of money.
SARAH WINFREY
"5 Reasons Stealth Wealth Is the Best Wealth", WiseBread, March 24, 2017
Wealth--the most excellent of all gods.
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
As large trees are not the most productive, neither are wealthy men the most liberal.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
It is doubtful if even experience of riches and success is as intense among those who have experienced nothing else as among those who have also experienced poverty and failure. There is little romance in wealth to those who have been born wealthy and whose families have been wealthy for generations.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Little Angel: A Book of Essays
To remain secure and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations must extend the kind of cooperation to the less fortunate members that will inspire hope, confidence and progress. A rich nation can for a time, without noticeable damage to itself, pursue a course of self- indulgence, making its single goal the material ease and comfort of its own citizens--thus repudiating its own spiritual and material stake in a peaceful and prosperous society of nations. But the enmities it will incur, the isolation into which it will descend, and the internal moral and physical softness that will be engendered, will, in the long term, bring it to disaster.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
State of the Union Address, January 7, 1960
While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
Riches naturally gain a man a favourable reception in the world, and give merit a double lustre, when a person is endowed with it; and supply its place, in great measure, when it is absent. Tis wonderful to observe what airs of superiority fools and knaves, with large possessions, give themselves above men of the greatest merit in poverty.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
HENRY GEORGE
Progress and Poverty
The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
If you do not appreciate what you now have you will never appreciate what you will have.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Great wealth and great poverty will disintegrate a nation in about the same time.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Titles, riches, and fine houses signify no more to the making of one man better than another, than the finer saddle to the making the better horse.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Wealth has never the value to its possessor as it is supposed to have by an avaricious admirer.
ANTHONY LISLE
The Westminster Review, January 1914
Wealth is an engine that can be used for power, if you are an engineer; but to be tied to the fly wheel of an engine is rather a misfortune.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to Ernest Hemingway, August 1936