quotations about money
Money alone sets all the world in motion.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
When a man makes a specialty of knowing how some other fellow ought to spend his money, he usually thinks in millions and works for hundreds.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Old Gorgon Graham
Money spent withdraws its charm.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
We ought not to have more use and esteem of money and coin than of stones. And the devil seeks to blind those who desire or value it more than stones. Let us therefore take care lest after having left all things we lose the kingdom of heaven for such a trifle. And if we should chance to find money in any place, let us no more regard it than the dust we tread under our feet.
FRANCIS OF ASSISI
First Rule of the Friars Minor
Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked.
FRANCES BURNEY
The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney
Money is freedom. Money is a private plane. Money is no metal detection.
50 CENT
Esquire, January 2010
Whatever you want must first be born in mind; nothing can come into the objective world that is not already in mind. Human beings have different wants and different ideals. While money in itself has no value except as it is employed as a medium of exchange, and to promote health, happiness and usefulness; hence, in the last analysis, money is an important factor in helping to bring into outward expression ideas and ideals, which are first born in mind.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Money", Human Life from Many Angles
Money often costs too much.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
Money is a terrible blab; she will betray the secrets of her owner, whatever he do to gag her. His virtues will creep out in her whisper; his vices she will cry aloud at the top of her tongue.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Caxtoniana
You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.
LARRY MCMURTRY
Some Can Whistle
The wealthy seldom possess wealth: oftener they are possessed by it.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
The jingling of a fat purse always commands the world.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
Money ... is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a very good judge, but there is no better.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Erewhon
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
JAMES BALDWIN
"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy", Esquire, May 1961
It is easy, of course, to point out the dangers resulting from a too intense devotion to money-getting. Bacon calls riches "the baggage of virtue"; and we all know how the Romans, in their heroic days, when they annihilated their foes, expressed their contempt by a similar word, impedimenta; and that when they grew weak and degraded they clung to their gold, with which they bought off the barbarians who invaded them. But whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavorable to the exercise of the higher functions of the mind and soul. The poor man is hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never knows. Doubtless the highest virtues are sometimes found to flourish even in the cold clime and sterile soil of poverty. Not only industry, honesty, frugality, perseverance amid hardships and ever-baffling discouragement, severe self-sacrifice, tender affections, unwavering trust in Providence, all are formed blooming in the hearts of the poorest poor--even in the sunless regions of absolute destitution, where honesty might be expected to wear an everlasting scowl of churlishness, and a bitter disbelief in the love of God to accompany obedience to the laws of man. But it is the most insufferable of all cants to hear these qualities spoken of as if they were indigenous to poverty, when we know that they flourish in spite of it.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
"Money--Its Use and Abuse", Hints on Success in Life
'Tis money that begets money.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
Money and goods are certainly the best of references.
CHARLES DICKENS
Our Mutual Friend
Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
Stripped of ideals, mere money making is among the coarsest of occupations.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts