Great Throughts Treasury

"Better is bread with a happy heart than riches with vexation." - Amen-em-apt NULL

"Better is the praise and love of men than riches in the storehouse." - Amen-em-apt NULL

"A great estate is a great disadvantage to those who do not know hot to use it, for nothing is more common than to see wealthy persons live scandalously and miserably; riches do them no service in order to virtue and happiness; it is precept and principle, not an estate, that makes a man good for something." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Hope is the best part of our riches. What sufficeth it that we have the wealth of the Indies in our pockets, if we have not the hope of heaven in our souls?" - Christian Nestell Bovee

"My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants." - Joseph Brotherton

"We want fewer things to live in poverty with satisfaction, than to live magnificently in riches." - Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond

"Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one." - Owen Feltham

"The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"There are two considerations which always embitter the heart of an avaricious man - the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he has already acquired." - Henry Fielding

"Riches either serve or govern the possessor." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"One of the most useless of all things is to take a deal of trouble in providing against dangers that never come. How many toil to lay up riches which they never enjoy; to provide for exigencies that never happen; to prevent troubles that never come; sacrificing present comfort and enjoyment in guarding against the wants of a period they may never live to see." - William Jay

"I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches." - Thomas Jefferson

"Every man is rich or poor, according to the proportion between his desires and enjoyments. Of riches as of everything else, the hope is more than the enjoyment. While we consider them as the means to be used at some future time for the attainment of felicity, ardor after them secures us from weariness of ourselves; but no sooner do we sit down to enjoy our acquisitions than we find them insufficient to fill up the vacuities of life." -

"Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim." -

"Wealth is the mans, and the people are the ends. All our material riches will avail us little if we do not use them to expand the opportunities of our people." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

"Riches are gotten with pain, kept with care, and lost with grief. The cares of riches lie heavier upon a good man than the inconveniences of an honest poverty." - Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

"What keeps persons down in the world, besides lack of capacity, is not a philosophical contempt of riches or honors, but thoughtlessness and improvidence, a love of sluggish torpor, and of present gratification. It is not from preferring virtue to wealth - the goods of the mind to those of fortune - that they take no thought for the morrow; but from want of forethought and stern self-command. The restless, ambitious man too often directs these qualities to an unworthy object; the contented man is generally deficient in the qualities themselves. The one is a stream that flows too often in a wrong channel, and needs to have its course altered, the other is a stagnant pool." -

"To be forbearing to all - that is love; to be relentless toward self - that is wisdom; to be content with what one has - that is riches; to be discontented with what one is - that is piety." - Nikita Ivanovich Panin

"A learned man has always riches within himself." - Phaedrus, fully Gaius Julius Phaedrus NULL

"He who is contented with his lot has the greatest and surest riches." - Publius Syrus

"Happy is he the place of whose affection is founded upon virtue, walled with riches, glazed with beauty, and roofed with honour." - Francis Quarles

"Let the foundation of thy affection be virtue, then make the building as rich and as glorious as thou canst; if the foundation be beauty or wealth, and the building virtue, the foundation is too weak for the building, and it will fall: happy is he, the palace of whose affection is founded upon virtue, walled with riches, glazed with beauty, and roofed with honor." - Francis Quarles

"Woudst thou multiply thy riches? diminish them wisely; or wouldst thou make thy estate entire? divide it charitably. Seeds that are scattered increase; but, hoarded up, they perish." - Francis Quarles

"Look at me - I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches, but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love." - Red Cloud, fully Maȟpíya Lúta in Lakota NULL

"Sleep, riches, and health are only truly enjoyed after they have been interrupted." -

"Lack of desire is the greatest riches." -

"The shortest way to riches is by contempt of riches." -

"He who recognizes no higher logic than that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and yet remain a very poor creature, for riches are no proof of moral worth, and their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their possessor, as the glowworm's light reveals the grub." - Samuel Smiles

"To be rich in admiration and free from envy; to rejoice greatly in the good of others; to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence; these are the gifts of fortune which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing. He who has such a treasury of riches, being happy and valiant himself, in his own nature, will enjoy the universe as if it were his own estate; and help the man to whom he lends a hand to enjoy it with him." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy them, but to have them; and starves himself in the midst of plenty, and most unnaturally cheats and robs himself of that which is his own; and makes a hard shift, to be as poor and miserable with a great estate, as any man can be without it." - John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury

"Worldly riches are like nuts; many clothes are torn in getting them, many a tooth broke in cracking them, but never a belly filled with eating them." - Ralph Venning

"Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we don't value the sun for its height." - Kenneth Eldon Bailey

"Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use." - Gamaliel Bailey

"There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence." - J. E. Boodin

"There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads on the heels of great and unexpected riches." - Jean de La Bruyère

"A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles." - Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton

"Misery assails riches, as lightning does the highest towers; or as a tree that is heavy laden with fruits breaks its own boughs, so do riches destroy the virtue of their possessor." - Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton

"Riches should be admitted into our houses, but not into our hearts; we may take them into our possession, but not into our affections." - Pierre Charron

"You cannot hold on to anything good. You must be continually giving - and getting. You cannot hold on to your seed. You must sow it - and reap anew. You cannot hold on to riches. You must use them and get other riches in return." - Robert Collier

"People want riches; they need fulfillment." - Robert Conkin, aka Bob Conkin

"Great ideas have such radiant strength. They cross space and time like avalanches: they carry along with them whatever they touch. They are the only riches that one shares without ever dividing them." - Georges Duhamel, Pen name Denis Thevenin

"If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires." -

"Providence has decreed that those common acquisitions - money, gems, plate, noble mansions and dominion - should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labor." -

"Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason." - Henry Fielding

"Riches without charity are nothing worth. They are a blessing only to him who makes them a blessing to others." - Henry Fielding

"He who multiplies riches multiplies cares." - Benjamin Franklin

"Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul, and never forget to have a penny, when all thy expenses are enumerated and paid: then shalt thou reach the point of happiness and independence shall by thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy soul walk upright nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds." - Benjamin Franklin

"Riches amassed in haste will diminish, but those collected by little and little will multiply." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Pleasures, riches, honor, and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity, and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. Oh, the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world!" -

"Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss." - Samuel Gregory