Greed Quotes - Page 15

• 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, Missing, Prejudice

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

  Ben Jonson

  Wealth, Glory, Possession

  1609 Volpone, act 1, sc.1.

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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

  Soul, Mind, Gains

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

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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, Wish, Littles

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

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• People can commend the weather without envy.

  William Shenstone

  Weather, People, Envy

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• Avarice is a cursed vice: offer a man enough gold, and he will part with his own small hoard of food, however great his hunger.

  Lucian

  Men, Gold, Vices

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• It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, Trying, Dinner

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• The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Order, Worship

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2012). “The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton”, p.112, Ignatius Press

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• When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

  Jonathan Swift

  Running, Mind, Desire

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.893, Delphi Classics

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• What is at the heart of all national problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Heart, Rights, Hands

  Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.19, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Passion, Decay, May

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• When we look into the human heart we see the lust, the greed, the hate, the pride, the anger, and the jealousies that are so destructive. This is at the heart of the human predicament, and the Scriptures call this condition sin.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Hate, Heart, Pride

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• If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed".

  Ayn Rand

  Selfish, Struggle, Liberty

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.42, Penguin

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• In the arts of life main invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. ... There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Death, Art, Nature

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.2044, e-artnow

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• A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.

  Norman Mailer

  Horse, Fear, Fighting

  Norman Mailer (1968). “The idol and the octopus: political writings, on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations”

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• The media have just buried the last yuppie, a pathetic creature who had not heard the news that the great pendulum of public consciousness has just swung from Greed to Compassion and from Tex-Mex to meatballs

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Compassion, Media, Yuppies

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Let us not forget such words, and all they mean, as hatred, bitterness, and rancor greed, intolerance, bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to man, his right to be himself and free.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Hate, Mean, Equality

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• The more our hearts and minds are turned to assisting others less fortunate than we, the more we will avoid the spiritually cankering effects that result from greed, selfishness and overindulgence.

  Joe J. Christensen

  Selfish, Heart, Mind

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• There will be selfishness and greed and corruption and narrowness and intolerance in the world tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow. But pray God we may have the courage and the wisdom and the vision to raise a definite standard that will appeal to the best that is in man, and then strive mightily toward that goal.

  Harold Stassen

  Courage, Selfish, Men

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• Education has now become the chief problem of the world, its one holy cause. The nations that see this will survive, and those that fail to do so will slowly perish. . . . There must be re-education of the will and of the heart as well as of the intellect; and the ideals of service must supplant those of selfishness and greed.

  G. Stanley Hall

  Selfish, Heart, Science

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• If you make a habit of sincere prayer, your life will be very noticeably and profoundly altered. Prayer stamps with its indelible mark our actions and demeanor. A tranquillity of bearing, a facial and bodily repose, are observed in those whose inner lives are thus enriched. Within the depths of consciousness a flame kindles. And man sees himself. He discovers his selfishness, his silly pride, his fears, his greeds, his blunders. He develops a sense of moral obligation, intellectual humility. Thus begins a journey of the soul toward the realm of grace.

  Alexis Carrel

  Prayer, Selfish, Silly

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• Men of vision. Oh, I love the fine names men give each other to hide their greed and lust for adventure.

  Charles MacArthur

  Travel, Adventure, Men

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• Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.

  David Livingstone

  Christian, Believe, Godly

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• Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it

  Samuel Johnson

  Wall, Passion, Ambition

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.262

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• There is a very fine line between listening and stalking.

  Jay Baer

  Listening, Nausea, Lines

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