Misers Quotes - Page 5

• We ought to run after crosses as the miser runs after money. . . Nothing but crosses will reassure us at the Day of Judgment When that day shall come, we shall be happy in our misfortunes, proud of our humiliations, and rich in our sacrifices!

  John Vianney

  Running, Sacrifice, Proud

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• Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul this is the miser's curse this the chain and ball the sensualist drags.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Soul, Balls, Chains

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• Joy may be a miser,
  But Sorrow's purse is free.

  Richard Henry Stoddard

  Joy, Sorrow, May

  "Persian Song". "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end.

  Herbert Spencer

  Mistake, Mean, Men

  "The Principles of Ethics" by Herbert Spencer, New York, (§ 14, pp. 38-39), 1915.

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• The ambitious sacrifices all to what he terms honor, as the miser all to money.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Ambition, Sacrifice, Honor

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• Don't be afraid of losing a little power in daily associations. People who seek power and knowledge aren't misers. They aren't afraid. That is paranoid.

  Frederick Lenz

  People, Littles, Association

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• If you got to castrate your miser'ble self with a piece o' rusty barb wire, do it.

  Fred Phelps

  Self, Scary, Wire

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• In adversity it is easy to despise life; he is truly brave who can endure a wretched life.
  [Lat., Rebus in angustis facile est contemnere vitam;
  Fortiter ille facit qui miser esse potest.]

  Martial

  Adversity, Bravery, Easy

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• Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.

  William Hazlitt

  Dream, Fame, Poet

  William Hazlitt, Edward George Earle Lytten Butwer-Lytton Lyton (1st baron), Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1836). “Essays: On self-love. On the conduct of life: or, Advice to a school-boy. On the fine arts. The fight. On want of money. On the feeling of immortality in youth. The main-chance. The opera. Of persons one would wish to have seen. My first acquaintance with poets. The shyness of scholors. The Vatican. On the spirit of monarchy”, p.293

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• [On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches.

  Ouida

  Lying, Hypocrisy, Religion

  Ouida (1896). “Views and Opinions”

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• Consider, for example, and you will find that almost all the transactions in the time of Vespasian differed little from those of the present day. You there find marrying and giving in marriage, educating children, sickness, death, war, joyous holidays, traffic, agriculture, flatterers, insolent pride, suspicions, laying of plots, longing for the death of others, newsmongers, lovers, misers, men canvassing far the consulship and for the kingdom; yet all these passed away, and are nowhere.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Children, War, Holiday

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• Do you wish to become rich? You may become rich, that is, if you desire it in no half way, but thoroughly. A miser sacrifices all to his single passion; hoards farthings and dies possessed of wealth. Do you wish to master any science or accomplishment? Give yourself to it and it lies beneath your feet. Time and pains will do anything. This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Pain, Lying, Passion

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.42

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• Habit hath so vast a prevalence over the human mind that there is scarce anything too strange or too strong to be asserted of it. The story of the miser who, from long accustoming to cheat others, came at last to cheat himself, and with great delight and triumph picked his own pocket of a guinea to convey to his hoard, is not impossible or improbable.

  Henry Fielding

  Strong, Long, Mind

  Henry Fielding (2012). “Joseph Andrews”, p.186, tredition

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• Mutability is the badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike. Now he is for marrying; and now a mistress is preferred to a wife. Now he is ambitious and aspiring; presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he. This hour he squanders his money away; the next he turns miser. Sometimes he is frugal and serious; at other times profuse, airy, and gay.

  Pierre Charron

  Humble, Gay, Men

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• Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of miser-life are breathing. A forfeited bond twinkles in the hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle has caught a stray tint from his usurer. Features of exquisite beauty are seen and loved; but the old nature of avarice frets under the glow of devotion. Pathos staggers on the edge of farce.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Art, Children, Eye

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.46

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• Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer.

  Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

  Book, Gold, Fields

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• The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Infidelity, Depth, Treasure

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.109

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• WE two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving. No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, Fulfilling our foray.

  Walt Whitman

  Beach, Drinking, Sleep

  Walt Whitman (2011). “Walt Whitman's Songs of Male Intimacy and Love: "Live Oak, with Moss" and "Calamus"”, p.94, University of Iowa Press

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• She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Singing, Suffering, Sorrow

  Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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• You know that I love you." And despite herself, Coraline nodded. It was true. The other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold. In the other mother's button eyes, Coraline knew that she was a possession, nothing more. A tolerated pet, whose behavior was no longer amusing.

  Neil Gaiman

  Mother, Love You, Eye

  "Coraline". Book by Neil Gaiman, January 24, 2002.

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• Time was like the rain, glittering as it fell, changing the world, but something that could also be taken for granted. Until you love a mortal. Then time became gold in a miser's hands, every bright year counted out carefully, infinitely precious, and each one slipping through you fingers. Cassandra Clare: What Really Happened in Peru

  Cassandra Clare

  Rain, Taken, Hands

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• If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Debt, Quitting, Deeper

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

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• Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat. Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.

  Publius Attius Varus

  Men, Fame, He Man

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• So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Life, Age, Coins

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Poems”

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• It world be well had we more misers than we have among us.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  World, Economy, Wells

  Oliver Goldsmith, John Aikin (1809). “Letters from a citizen of the world (concluded). The Bee, a select collection of essays, on the most interesting and entertaining subjects”, p.300

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