Avarice Quotes - Page 7

• The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

  James Madison

  Peace, War, Passion

  "The Cost of America's Secret Wars, Then and Now" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. December 6, 2011.

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• What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

  Seneca the Younger

  Funny, Inspiring, Sarcastic

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• They sin who tell us Love can die:
  With life all other passions fly,
  All others are but vanity,
  In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
  Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.

  Robert Southey

  Life, Passion, Ambition

  Robert Southey (1853). “The Poetical Works of Robert Southey: Complete in One Volume”, p.583

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• History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.

  Edmund Burke

  Revenge, Ambition, Pride

  Edmund Burke (1868). “Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event: 1790”, p.161

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• He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Spring, Law, Luxury

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• These are the Seven Deadly Sins: Avarice, Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Sloth. These are the seven deadly sins: venality, paranoia, insecurity, excess, carnality, contempt, boredom.

  Martin Amis

  Pride, Envy, Boredom

  Martin Amis (1981). “Other people: a mystery story”, Jonathan Cape

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• We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.

  Derrick Bell

  America, Greed, Levels

  Derrick Bell (2010). “Ethical Ambition”, p.5, A&C Black

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• Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the marketplace, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes, and self-esteem of its victims.

  Frank Chodorov

  War, Self Esteem, Events

  Frank Chodorov (2007). “Rise and Fall of Society”, p.150, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Beautiful, Greed, Three

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.88, Vintage

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• Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

  Victor Hugo

  Running, Men, Bully

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.577, Modern Library

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• Yet avarice is numbered among the sins, but stupidity omitted.

  E. B. Farnum

  Stupidity, Avarice Greed, Sin

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• Purposeless activity may be a phase of death.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Greed, Phases, May

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• The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Running, Wall, Believe

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• People can commend the weather without envy.

  William Shenstone

  Weather, People, Envy

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• I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kind hearted, fat, benevolent people do.

  Mark Twain

  People, Greed, Wish

  Mark Twain (1994). “Mark Twain on the damned human race”

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• There are some souls so base and filthy that they love gain and interest as noble souls love fame and virtue, knowing one pleasure only, that of making money or of not losing it; anxious and avid for their ten per cent; entirely preoccupied with what is owed them; forever concerned about the depreciation or discredit of money; buried, and as it were engulfed, amid contracts, title-deeds and parchments. Such people are neither parents, friends, citizens or Christians, nor, perhaps, even men; they merely have money.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Greed, Soul, Mind

  "Of Worldly Goods". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

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• It is strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world.

  Emily Bronte

  People, Greed, World

  Emily Bronte “Wuthering Heights”, Lulu.com

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• I glory, more in the cunning purchase of my wealth than in the glad possession.

  Ben Jonson

  Greed, Wealth, Glory

  1609 Volpone, act 1, sc.1.

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• Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Passion, Greed, Missing

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• If we had to tolerate in others all that we permit in ourselves, life would become completely unbearable.

  Georges Courteline

  Greed, Unbearable, Permit

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• The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Power, Men, Atheism

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• Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations; others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Hope, Mistake, Sacrifice

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• Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, 'Never! Never!'

  Tecumseh

  Summer, Country, Giving Up

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• He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Heart, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies”

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• Those whose days are consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolties of fashion, unobservant of nature's lovelinessof demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.

  Aristotle

  Fashion, Nature, Lying

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