Wealth Quotes (page 7)
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It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.
Eric Hoffer
He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of...
Peter De Vries
A bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, hurried through the day by the whirl of society, filling their solitary moments with hastily-snatched caresses, are prepared for their future life together as the novice is prepared for the cloister—by experiencing its utmost contrast.
George Eliot
The Master said, “Wealth and honor are things that all people desire, and yet unless they are acquired in the proper way I will not abide them. Poverty and disgrace are things that all people hate, and yet unless they are avoided in the proper way I will not despise them.
“If the gentleman abandons ren, how can he be worthy of that name? The gentleman does not violate ren even for the amount of time required to eat a meal. Even in times of urgency or distress, he does not depart from...
Confucius
I had been hungry all the years-My noon had come, to dine-I, trembling, drew the table near. And touched the curious wine. 'Twas this on tables I had seen. When turning, hungry, lone, I looked in windows, for the wealth. I could not hope to own. I did not know the ample bread,'Twas so unlike the crumb. The birds and I had often shared. In Nature's diningroom. The plenty hurt me, 'twas so new,--Myself felt ill and odd, As berry of a mountain bush. Transplanted to the road. Nor was I hungry; so...
Emily Dickinson
the problem of life was as simple as it was classic. Politics offered no difficulties, for there the moral law was a sure guide. Social perfection was also sure, because human nature worked for Good, and three instruments were all she asked? Suffrage, Common Schools, and Press. On these points doubt was forbidden. Education was divine, and man needed only a correct knowledge of facts to reach perfection: "Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on...
Henry B. Adams
PatriotismBreathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, 'This is my own, my native land!' Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd As home his footsteps he hath turn'dFrom wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair...
Walter Scott
Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.
Epictetus