Money and Wealth

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, Prove false again? Two hundred more.

For what is worth in anything But so much money as ’twill bring?

Let none admire That riches grow in hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane.

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven; for ev’n in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific.

By no means run in debt: take thine own measure. Who cannot live on twenty pound a year, Cannot on forty.

Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice—almighty gold.

The wealthy curled darlings of our nation.

An itching palm.

How quickly nature falls into revolt When gold becomes her object!

O polish’d perturbation! golden care! That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide To many a watchful night!

O, what a world of vile ill-favor’d faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.

Apothecary: My poverty, but not my will, consents. Romeo: I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.

Saint-seducing gold.

I come to wive it wealthily in Padua.

Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness.

Infinite riches in a little room. 3

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, As sages in all times assert; The happy man’s without a shirt.

Greet prees at market maketh deere ware, And to greet cheep is holde at litel prys.

If gold ruste, what shal iren do?

For gold in phisik is a cordial, Therefore he lovede gold in special.

For hym was levere have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed, Of Aristotle and his philosophie, Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie, But al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre.

One goes on writing partly because it is the only available way of earning a living. It is a hard way and highly competitive. My heart drops into my bowels when I enter a bookshop and see how fierce the competition is. But one pushes on because one has to pay bills.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think of what to do with the long winter evenings.