Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Riches

"Children are a poor man's riches." - English Proverbs

"Riches serve a wise man but command a fool." - English Proverbs

"If you want to make a man happy, add not to his riches, but take away from his desires." - Epicurus NULL

"I cannot call riches by a better name than the "baggage" of virtue; the Roman word is better, "impediment." For as the baggage is to an army, so are riches to virtue. It cannot be spared or left behind, and yet it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no real use, except in the distribution; the rest is but conceit." - Francis Bacon

"Be not penny-wise; riches have wings; sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more." - Francis Bacon

"Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them who despair of them; and none are worse than they when riches come to them." - Francis Bacon

"Great riches have sold more men than they have brought." - Francis Bacon

"Riches have wings." - Francis Bacon

"Haven’t you noticed that people always exaggerate the value of things they haven’t got? The poor think they need nothing but riches to be quite happy and good. Everybody worships truth, purity, unselfishness, for the same reason: because they have no experience of them. Oh, if they only knew!" - George Bernard Shaw

"The whole record of civilization is a record of the failure of money as a higher incentive. The enormous majority of men never make any serious effort to get rich. The few who are sordid enough to do so easily become millionaires with a little luck, and astonish the others by the contrast between their riches and their stupidity... The belief in money as an incentive is founded on the observation that people will do for money what they will not do for anything else." - George Bernard Shaw

"To have what we want is riches, but to be able to do without is power." - George MacDonald

"Fools scatter about their many attributes, the wise keep such within; A piece of straw floats upon the surface of water. A precious gemstone sinks to the bottom! Therefore, it is best to disregard the seen. And concentrate upon the unseen. Only within the latter may riches be found." - Greek Proverbs

"Let parents who hate their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches; an before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty." - Henry Ward Beecher

"A man may be outwardly successful all his life long, and die hollow and worthless as a puff-ball; and he may be externally defeated all his life long, and die in the royalty of a kingdom established within him. A man's true estate of power and riches, is to be in himself; not in his dwelling, or position, or external relations, but in his own essential character. That is the realm on which he is to live, if he is to live as a good man." - Henry Ward Beecher

"Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life." - Henry Ward Beecher

"Fame is vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character." - Horace Greeley

"Men who have great riches and little culture rush into business, because they are weary of themselves." - Horace Greeley

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today will curse tomorrow; only one thing endures – character." - Horace Greeley

"Fame is a vapor. Popularity is an accident. Riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character." - Horace Greeley

"Riches ennoble a man’s circumstances, but not himself." - Immanuel Kant

"To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be." - James Bryant Conant

"Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving old as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence." - James Bryant Conant

"Sleep, riches, and health - to be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted." - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter

"Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance." - Joseph Addison

"Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart." - Joseph Addison

"Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects the alchemist ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them. If it cannot remove the disquietudes arising from a man's mind, body or fortune, it makes him easy under them." - Joseph Addison

"Morals today are corrupted by our worship of riches." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they; to God’s word? Yea, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health, or to the gifts of the mind such as understanding, skill, wisdom? Yet men toil for them day and night and take no rest. Therefore our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom He gives nothing else." - Martin Luther

"There is a burden of care in getting riches, fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning them." - Matthew Henry

"Goodness makes greatness truly valuable, and greatness make goodness much more serviceable." - Matthew Henry

"Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them." -

"Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

"All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea." - Napoleon Hill

"There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge - both poverty and riches are offspring of thought." - Napoleon Hill

"A learned man has always in himself a store of riches." -

"Our new-gotten riches are all a dream." - Plato NULL

"A shortcut to riches is to subtract from one's desires." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the Creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"Every individual nature has its own beauty. One is truck in every company, at every fireside, with the riches of nature, when he hears so many; new tones, all musical, sees in each person original manners, which have a proper and peculiar charm, and reads new expressions of face. He perceives that nature has laid for each the foundations of a divine building, if the soul will build thereon." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is not earthly riches which make us or our sons happy; for they must either be lost by us in our lifetime, or be possessed when we are dead, by whom we know not, or perhaps by whom we would not." -

"As to worldly riches, if you do not possess them, let them not be sought after on earth by doing evil; and if you possess them, let them by good works be paid up in heaven." -

"All the riches of the world and the glory of creation, compared with the wealth of God, are extreme and abject poverty." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

"Patience reaps peace, and rashness regret; the former riches, the latter poverty." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"There is no greater riches than health." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"He hath riches sufficient, who hath enough to be charitable." -

"Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

"Wisdom adorns riches, and shadows poverty." - Socrates NULL

"Always you are to be rich next Year... Riches alone make no Man happy." - Thomas Fuller