Quotes about riches

The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.

— Sholom Aleichem

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.

— Jean Anouilh

There are two things needed in these days; first, for rich men to find out how poor men live; and second, for poor men to know how rich men work.

— Edward Atkinson

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

— Francis Bacon

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? Why should you always talk of their envy, without understanding that what they ask of you is not so much your worldly goods, as something very hard to define, which they themselves can put no name to; yet at times it consoles their loneliness; a dream of splendor, of magnificence, a tawdry dream, a poor man's dream --and yet God blesses it!

— Georges Bernanos

He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent. [Proverbs 28:20]

— Bible

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

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Of all the riches that we hug, of all the pleasures we enjoy, we can carry no more out of this world than out of a dream.

— John S. Bonnell

Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them.

— Jean De La Bruyere

A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.

— Sir Richard Burton

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community --the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.

— Andrew Carnegie

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Among the very rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by other men.

— Charles Caleb Colton

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.

— Diogenes of Sinope

Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

— B. C. Forbes

If your riches are yours, why don't you take them with to the other world?

— Benjamin Franklin

He who multiplies riches, multiplies cares.

— Benjamin Franklin

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

— Benjamin Franklin

Riches enlarge rather than satisfy appetites.

— Thomas Fuller

Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

The jests of the rich are ever successful.

— Oliver Goldsmith

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.

— Billy Graham

Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.

— Dick Gregory

The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, The very rich are different from you and me. And how someone had said to Julian, Yes, they have more money.

— Ernest Hemingway

A sumptuous dwelling the rich man hath. And dainty is his repast; but remember that luxury's prodigal hand keeps the furnace of toil in blast.

— Mary Elizabeth Hewitt

Think and grow rich.

— Napoleon Hill

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.

— Samuel Johnson

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

— Samuel Johnson

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

— Charles Lamb

The bottom line is in heaven.

— Edwin H. Land

He who is contented is rich.

— Lao-Tzu

He who knows he has enough is rich.

— Lao-Tzu

Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation.

— Lewis H. Lapham

A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.

— Lewis H. Lapham

So our Lord God commonly gave riches to those gross asses to whom he vouchsafed nothing else.

— Martin Luther

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

— Karl Marx

Of rich men it telleth, and strange is the story how they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide; And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory has been but a burden they scarce might abide.

— William Morris

The trouble is that rich people, well-to-do people, very often don't really know who the poor are; and that is why we can forgive them, for knowledge can only lead to love, and love to service. And so, if they are not touched by them, it's because they do not know them.

— Mother Teresa

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

— Mother Teresa

No one has ever said it, but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.

— Hector Hugh Munro

I don't mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, but I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.

— Ogden Nash

For a person to build a rich and rewarding life for himself, there are certain qualities and bits of knowledge that he needs to acquire. There are also things, harmful attitudes, superstitions, and emotions that he needs to chip away. A person needs to chip away everything that doesn't look like the person he or she most wants to become.

— Earl Nightingale

For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.

— Plato

Riches have wings.

— Proverb

The acquisition of riches has been to many not an end to their miseries, but a change in them: The fault is not in the riches, but the disposition.

— Seneca

O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults, looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

— William Shakespeare

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.

— George Bernard Shaw

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

— George Bernard Shaw

About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.

— Henry Wheeler Shaw

With the great part of rich people, the chief employment of riches consists in the parade of riches.

— Adam Smith

The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

— Socrates

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

— Socrates

Riches are a stronghold in the imagination of a rich man.

— Solomon

Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.

— Stephen Swid

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

— Jonathan Swift

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

— Henry David Thoreau

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

— Henry David Thoreau

Her voice is full of money.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy.

— Source Unknown

To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.

— Raoul Vaneigem

The rich aren't like us; they pay less taxes.

— Peter De Vries

To value riches is not to be covetous. They are the gift of God, and, like every gift of his, good in themselves, and capable of a good use. But to overvalue riches, to give them a place in the heart which God did not design them to fill, this is covetous

— H. L. Wayland

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?

— Oscar Wilde

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

— Benjamin Disraeli

No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It is better to live rich, than to die rich.

— Samuel Johnson

He must have killed a lot of men to have made so much money.

— Moliere