Quotes to inspire and reflect

The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.

Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain.

Decalogue, n. A series of commandments, ten in number—just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice.

Morality, thou deadly bane, / Thy tens o’ thousands thou hast slain! / Vain is his hope, whose stay an’ trust is / In moral mercy, truth, and justice!

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

Treading the soil of the moon, palpitating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one’s stomach the separation from terra—these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known.

Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky line, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous—and can shatter the world. And the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight—and that, also, can shatter the world.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in “Old Maid”; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.

Money is the counter that enables life to be lived socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and banknotes are money.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.

Even genius is tied to profit.

Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.

Gold is the key, whatever else we try; / And that sweet metal aids the conqueror / In every case, in love as well as war.

Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.

Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and existence; this essence dominates him and he worships it.

Cultivated people should be superior to any consideration so sordid as a mercenary interest.

Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.

Some men make money not for the sake of living, but ache / In the blindness of greed and live just for their fortune’s sake.

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.

Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.

Help me to money and I’ll help myself to friends.

With his own money a person can live as he likes—a ruble that’s your own is dearer than a brother.

Be the business never so painful, you may have it done for money.

God makes, and apparel shapes: but it’s money that finishes the man.

Never ask of money spent / Where the spender thinks it went. / Nobody was ever meant / To remember or invent / What he did with every cent.

Money’s the wise man’s religion.

Money helps, though not so much as you think when you don’t have it.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Money has a power above / The stars and fate, to manage love: / Whose arrows, learned poets hold, / That never miss, are tipped with gold.

Ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

Life is short and so is money.

People who can least afford to pay rent, pay rent. People who can most afford to pay rent, build up equity.

Money, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.

The convent is supreme egotism resulting in supreme self-denial.

Modesty—is a quality in a lover more praised by women than liked.

Monastic incarceration is castration.

The sage never seems to know his own merits, for only by not noticing them can you call others’ attention to them.

With people of only moderate ability modesty is a mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.

Loquacity storms the ear, but modesty takes the heart.

A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.