Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires 10 times as much wit to keep it.
9
He is not fit for riches who is afraid to use them.
11
The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.
17
It is difficult to set bounds to the price unless you first set bounds to the wish.
15
The wealth of man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.
10
We all covet wealth, but not its perils.
10
Misers are neither relations, nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even human beings.
10
The true way to gain much, is never to desire to gain too much. He is not rich that possesses much, but he that covets no more; and he is not poor that enjoys little, but he that wants too much.
12
Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.
7
Prosperity is too apt to prevent us from examining our conduct, but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
5
The doctrine of thrift for the poor is dumb and cruel, like advising them to try and lift themselves by their bootstraps.
16
When prosperity comes, do not use all of it.
21
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
22
Avarice, in old age, is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end?
16
Just as war is waged with the blood of others, fortunes are made with other people’s money.
27
His money is twice tainted: ’taint yours and ’taint mine.
11
All the money in the world is no use to a man or his country if he spends it as fast as he makes it. All he has left is his bills and the reputation for being a fool.
17
I finally know what distinguishes man from the beasts: financial worries.
19
Money is like an arm or leg—use it or lose it.
29
The cure for materialism is to have enough for everybody and to share. When people are sure of having what they need they cease to think about it.
27
They say that knowledge is power. I used to think so, but I now know that they meant money. Every guinea is a philosopher’s stone.
9
When fortune smiles, what need of friends?
8
If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.
9
There are but two ways of paying debt—increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.
8
A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.
25
We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
9
Honor is like the eye, which cannot suffer the least injury without damage; it is a precious stone, the price of which is lessened by the least flaw.
10
No man is really honest; none of us is above the influence of gain.
30
We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem.
9
Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
11
He that respects not is not respected.
18
Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself, and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.
19
There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.
5
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
12
Blessed is the man that has found his work. One monster there is in the world, the idle man.
6
I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.
9
Shun the inquisitive, for you will be sure to find him leaky. Open ears do not keep conscientiously what has been entrusted to them, and a word once spoken flies, never to be recalled.
10
The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.
10
Every ass loves to hear himself bray.
10
We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.
13
From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
13
The way to do big, unique things is to focus on those things and pursue them.
10
Progress is the law of life; man is not a man as yet.
21
It would be a kind of ferocity to reject indifferently all sorts of praise. One should be glad to have that which comes from good men who praise in sincerity things that are really praiseworthy.
9
Censure is often useful, praise often deceitful.
7
Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world.
9
The greater part of progress is the desire to progress.
9
All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.
11