quotations about money
We ought not to have more use and esteem of money and coin than of stones. And the devil seeks to blind those who desire or value it more than stones. Let us therefore take care lest after having left all things we lose the kingdom of heaven for such a trifle. And if we should chance to find money in any place, let us no more regard it than the dust we tread under our feet.
FRANCIS OF ASSISI
First Rule of the Friars Minor
Money, which represents the prose of life, and is hardly spoken of in parlors without apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Nominalist and Realist", Essays
But the merchant, if faithful to his principles, always employs his money reluctantly for any other purpose than that of augmenting itself.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.
EPICTETUS
The Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion and Fragments
If you wish to test a friend loan him money.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
In matters of money there's no such thing as enough.
JEAN ANOUILH
Thieves' Carnival
It is easy, of course, to point out the dangers resulting from a too intense devotion to money-getting. Bacon calls riches "the baggage of virtue"; and we all know how the Romans, in their heroic days, when they annihilated their foes, expressed their contempt by a similar word, impedimenta; and that when they grew weak and degraded they clung to their gold, with which they bought off the barbarians who invaded them. But whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavorable to the exercise of the higher functions of the mind and soul. The poor man is hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never knows. Doubtless the highest virtues are sometimes found to flourish even in the cold clime and sterile soil of poverty. Not only industry, honesty, frugality, perseverance amid hardships and ever-baffling discouragement, severe self-sacrifice, tender affections, unwavering trust in Providence, all are formed blooming in the hearts of the poorest poor--even in the sunless regions of absolute destitution, where honesty might be expected to wear an everlasting scowl of churlishness, and a bitter disbelief in the love of God to accompany obedience to the laws of man. But it is the most insufferable of all cants to hear these qualities spoken of as if they were indigenous to poverty, when we know that they flourish in spite of it.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
"Money--Its Use and Abuse", Hints on Success in Life
Money is like water in a leaky bucket: no sooner there, it begins to drip.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Money often costs too much.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
There is no sacrifice which men will not make for money. They will face belching cannon, clog their lungs with the dust of coal-mines or with the impalpable powder inhaled in the grinding of steel, become workers in arsenic, lead, phospherous, or any of the other substances so fatal to life, blast with gun-powder, live amid malaria, and risk their soul's peace in this world and the next, for gold. No toil is so exhausting, no danger so appalling, that men will not confront the one and undergo the other, if the stakes are only sufficiently high. "A certain ten percent," says an English economist, "will insure the employment of capital anywhere. Twenty percent certain will produce eagerness. Fifty percent, positive audacity. One hundred percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws. Three hundred percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged." Even the preacher's call swells from "the still small voice" to a trumpet peal when it comes from the offer of a double salary. Harassing doubts and indecision vanish like a dew before the logic of five thousand a year and a parsonage. The parish that is made up of rich merchants, brokers, and capitalists, is seen to be "a larger field of labor" when viewed through gold spectacles.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
"Money--Its Use and Abuse", Hints on Success in Life
You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
Money spent withdraws its charm.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.
LARRY MCMURTRY
Some Can Whistle
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain's Notebook
The wealthy seldom possess wealth: oftener they are possessed by it.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Whatever you want must first be born in mind; nothing can come into the objective world that is not already in mind. Human beings have different wants and different ideals. While money in itself has no value except as it is employed as a medium of exchange, and to promote health, happiness and usefulness; hence, in the last analysis, money is an important factor in helping to bring into outward expression ideas and ideals, which are first born in mind.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Money", Human Life from Many Angles
When we lavish our money we rob our heir; when we merely save it we rob ourselves.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a man to make money. It's nothing you do. It's no trick you play. It's a sort of permanent accident of your own nature; once you start, you make money, and you go on ... But you've got to begin ... You've got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You've got to beat your way in. Once you've done that, you can't help it!
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
JAMES BALDWIN
"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy", Esquire, May 1961