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WEALTH
See also ABUNDANCE, MONEY, PROSPERITY, SPENDING
I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
DOROTHY PARKER
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If I were rich I'd have the Time that I lack To sit in the Synagogue and pray, And maybe have a seat by the Eastern Wall. And I'd discuss the Holy Books With the learned men Seven hours every day. That would be the sweetest thing of all.
SHELDON HARNICK FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
Riches are not from an abundance of worldly goods, but from a contented mind.
MOHAMMED
A man's true wealth is the good he does in this world.
ANONYMOUS
Seek wealth, it's good.
IVAN BOESKY
I care for riches, to make gifts To friends, or lead a sick man back to health With ease and plenty. Else small aid is wealth For daily gladness; once a man be done With hunger, rich and poor are all as one.
EURIPIDES
I only want enough to keep body and soul apart.
DOROTHY PARKER
I have no riches but my thoughts, yet these are wealth enough for me.
SARA TEASDALE
The use of riches is better than their possession. Riches do not make one rich but busy.
FERNANDO DE ROJAS
Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
FRANCIS BACON
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
That's the state to live and die in! R-r-rich!
CHARLES DICKENS
Wealth is not in making money, but in making the man while he is making money.
JOHN WICKER
Wealth to us is not mere material for vain glory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome.
THUCYDIDES
Pearls around the neck—stones upon the heart.
YIDDISH PROVERB
Watching for riches consumeth the flesh, and the care thereof driveth away sleep.
ECCLESIASTICUS 31:1
Banks are failing all over the country, but not the sand banks, solid and warm and streaked with bloody blackberry vines. You may run on them as much as you please, even as the crickets do . . .
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If a man own land, the land owns him.
Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
Natural wealth is limited and easily obtained; the wealth defined by vain fancies is always beyond reach.
EPICURUS
It ain't so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich.
JOSH BILLINGS
I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expense, and my expense is equal to my wishes.
EDWARD GIBBON
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We live in a vastly complex society which has been able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to suspect that we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty.
EUELL GIBBONS
Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
FRANCIS BACON
Be not penny-wise: riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves; sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.
FRANCIS BACON
You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
DEUTERONOMY 8:17-18
The Pluto-American Anti-Defamation League said it will bring pressure to bear on media to up-grade the image of incredibly rich people. The newly-formed group, which hopes to combat negative portrayals of incredibly rich people on television and in print, cited the crucial role that incredibly rich people have played in American history, and hopes to restore incredible richness as a "positive aspect of American life."
OFF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WHAT YOU READ IN THE PAPER
MARTIANS BUILD TWO IMMENSE CANALS IN TWO YEARS! Vast Engineering Works Accomplished in an Incredibly Short Time by Our Planetary Neighbors
NEW YORK TIMES front-page headline August 27, 1911
The French army is still the best all-around fighting machine in Europe.
TIME June 12, 1939
Comet Kohoutek promises to be the celestial extravaganza of the century.
NEWSWEEK November 5, 1973
For the majority of people, smoking has a beneficial effect.
DR. IAN G. MACDONALD Newsweek, Nov. 18, 1963
Everything you read in the newspaper is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.
ERWIN KNOLL
WISDOM
We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
MARCEL PROUST
Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.
LORD CHESTERFIELD
For the very true beginning of wisdom is the desire of discipline; and the care of discipline is love.
WISDOM OF SOLOMON 6:17
Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
MARK TWAIN
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
T. H. HUXLEY
The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday will become the wisdom of tomorrow.
WILLIAM OSLER MONTREAL MEDICAL JOURNAL
Wisdom is the power that enables us to use knowledge for the benefit of ourselves and others.
THOMAS J. WATSON
A wise man's heart guides his mouth.
PROVERBS 16:23
The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A short saying oft contains much wisdom.
SOPHOCLES
To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it.
JOHN CHURTON COLLINS
The wise and moral man Shines like a fire on a hilltop, Making money like the bee, Who does not hurt the flower.
PALI CANON
WOMEN
I buy women shoes, and they use them to walk away from me.
MICKEY ROONEY
Are women books? says Hodge, then would mine were an Almanack, to change her every year.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We can call each other girls, chicks, broads, birds and dames with equanimity. Many of us prefer to do so since the word "woman," being two syllables, is long, unwieldy, and earnest. But a man must watch his ass. Never may a man be permitted to call any female a "chick." He may call you a broad or a dame only if he is a close friend and fond of John Garfield movies. The term "bird," generally used by fatuous Englishmen, is always frowned upon.
CYNTHIA HEIMEL
You can't be happy with a woman who pronounces both d's in Wednesday.
PETER DE VRIES
WONDER
See also APPRECIATION, GRATITUDE
The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
WORDS TO LIVE BY
See also RULES
Condoms aren't completely safe. A friend of mine was wearing one and got hit by a bus.
BOB RUBIN
Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut.
DANIEL S. GREENBERG
If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.
NIKITA KHRUSCHEV
Never eat anything whose listed ingredients cover more than one-third the package.
JOSEPH LEONARD
Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.
DAVID H. COMINS
Let your intentions create your methods and not the other way around.
THE AUTHOR although Benjamin Franklin said it first
Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper.
QUENTIN CRISP
You can't tell your friend if you've been cuckolded. Even if he doesn't laugh at you, he may put the information to personal use.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET!
MARK TWAIN
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
STUART'S LAW OF RETROACTION
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
ERMA BOMBECK
Don't go to piano bars where young, unemployed actors get up and sing. Definitely don't be a young, unemployed actor who gets up and sings.
TONY LANG
Live simply that others may simply live.
ELIZABETH SEATON
Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
OSCAR WILDE
Always obey your superiors—if you have any.
MARK TWAIN
Dare to be naive.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and shoot down the middle.
PRAGMATIC CREED
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
DAMON RUNYON
One does not moisten a stamp with the Niagara Falls.
P. W. R. FOOT
This warning from the New York City Department of Health Fraud: Be suspicious of any doctor who tries to take your temperature with his finger.
DAVID LETTERMAN
No leg's too short to reach the ground.
LYNDON IRVING
She that knows why knows wherefore.
JIM SNELL
He digs deepest who deepest digs.
ROGER WODDIS
My dear, I don't care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
ADDISON MIZNER
If it might break, don't go near it.
HERBERT STEIN
Go through the motions anyway; you might get lucky.
THOMAS MAGNUM
When you handle yourself, use your head; when you handle others, use your heart.
DONNA REED
When the telephone rings, it is against the law not to answer it.
RING LARDNER
Comments from the public are always welcome in courts of law. When you start speaking, an usher will call "Silence in court" to ensure that you are heard without interruption.
PETER ALEXANDER
WORDS TO LIVE BY WHEN IN ENGLAND
London barbers are delighted to shave patrons' armpits.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Most foreign tourists know that in London they are encouraged to take a piece of fruit, free of charge, from any open-air stall or display.
MICHAEL LIPTON
Women are not allowed upstairs on buses; if you see a woman there ask her politely to descend.
DAVID GORDON
Try the famous echo in the British Museum Reading Room.
GERARD HOFFNUNG
On first entering an Underground train, it is customary to shake hands with every passenger.
R. J. PHILLIPS
WORK
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
JOHN RUSKIN
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
ROBERT FROST
The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
I don't have anything against work. I just figure, why deprive somebody who really enjoys it?
DOBIE GILLIS
NAPOLEON SOLO: Are you free? ILLYA KURAKIN: No man is free who has to work for a living. But I am available.
THE MAN FROM UNCLE
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
PABLO PICASSO
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
WERNHER VON BRAUN discussing the business side of putting a man on the moon
Work is much more fun than fun.
NOËL COWARD
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
RICHARD BACH
Work seven days a week and nothing can stop you.
JOHN MOORES
If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job.
MALCOLM FORBES
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
LILY TOMLIN
The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
JAMES BALDWIN
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
MARGARET FULLER
Only a fool would make the bed every day.
NANCY SPAIN
What the hell do you want to work for somebody else for? Work for yourself!
IRVING BERLIN refusing to hire the young George Gershwin
INTERVIEWER: Your Holiness, how many people work in the Vatican? POPE JOHN XXIII: About half.
The best way to do field work is not to come up for air until you're done.
MARGARET MEAD
He who labors diligently need never despair, for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
MENANDER
Tradition cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor.
T. S. ELIOT
If the grass is greener in the other fellow's yard, let him worry about cutting it.
FRED ALLEN
The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.
CONFUCIUS
Dear, never forget one little point: It's my business. You just work here.
ELIZABETH ARDEN to her husband
I've made so many movies playing a hooker that they don't pay me in the regular way any more. They leave it on the dresser.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
MARK TWAIN
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
KHALIL GIBRANIT
Every really able man, in whatever direction he work, if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.
In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
JOHN RUSKIN
Work keeps us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.
VOLTAIRE
There is no substitute for hard work.
THOMAS EDISON
All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.
THOMAS CARLYLE
In the morning, when you are sluggish about getting up, let this thought be present: "I am rising to a man's work."
MARCUS AURELIUS
The return from work must be the satisfaction which that works brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this, with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need, this life is hell.
WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DUBOIS
I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in work: the chance to find yourself. Your own reality for yourself, not for others; what no other man can ever know.
JOSEPH CONRAD
I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.
LYDIA MARIA CHILD
Work is love made visible.
KHALIL GIBRAN
A great many people have asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
The natural dignity of our work, its unembarrassed kindness, its insight into life, its hold on science—for these privileges, and for all that they bring with them, up and up, high over the top of the tree, the very heavens open, preaching thankfulness.
STEPHEN PAGET
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
MARK TWAIN
The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Andy, you gits up at noon, then you rushes to get dressed, then you rushes to the restaurant for breakfast. After you eat, you rushes to the park to take a nap, after you take your nap then you rushes back to eat again; then you rushes home, rushes to get undressed and then you rushes to bed. I tell ya Andy, there's just so much a body can stand.
KINGFISH AMOS 'N' ANDY
I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
The superstition that all our hours of work are a minus quantity in the happiness of life, and all the hours of idleness are plus ones, is a most ludicrous and pernicious doctrine, and its greatest support comes from our not taking sufficient trouble, not making a real effort, to make work as near pleasure as it can be.
LORD BALFOUR
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. MENCKEN
All in all I'd rather have been a judge than a miner. And what is more, being a miner, as soon as you are too old and tired and sick and stupid to do the job properly, you have to go. Well, the very opposite applies with judges.
PETER COOK
Blessed is that man who has found his work.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man. Excellence in any art or profession is attained only by hard and persistent work. Never believe that you are perfect. When a man imagines, even after years of striving, that he has attained perfection, his decline begins.
THEODORE MARTIN at age ninety-two
Thinking is hard work.
THOMAS EDISON
The law of work does seem utterly unfair—but there it is, and nothing can change it; the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in money also.
MARK TWAIN
So far I've found that most high-level executives prefer the boardroom to the Bahamas. They don't really enjoy leisure time; they feel their work is their leisure.
WILLIAM THEOBALD
Work is our sanity, our self respect, our salvation. So far from being a curse, work is the greatest blessing.
HENRY FORD
It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.
B. C. FORBES
Gardens are not made by singing "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade.
RUDYARD KIPLING
I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Don't stay in bed . . . unless you make money in bed.
GEORGE BURNS
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
JEROME KLAPKA JEROME
Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.
PROVERBS 10:4
WORRY
See also ANXIETY, FEAR
What? Me Worry?
ALFRED E. NEWMAN
We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
LEWIS THOMAS
One way to get high blood pressure is to go mountain climbing over molehills.
EARL WILSON
Worries go down better with soup than without.
YIDDISH PROVERB
WORSHIP
See also GOD, PRAYER, RELIGION
Serve God, that He may do the like for you.
THE TEACHING FOR MERIKARE
Has God forgotten all I have done for him?
LOUIS XIV (Louis also said, when a coach arrived precisely on time, "I almost had to wait.")
Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute—but they all worship money.
MARK TWAIN
I meditated for hours on end. Chanted. I was finding God all over the place. He kept ditching me. You gotta understand, I thought I was on my way to Nirvana. All I ended up with was recurrent flashbacks of the original Mouseketeers.
REVEREND JIM IGNATOWSKI TAXI
One of the hardest things for any man to do is to fall down on the ice when it is wet and then get up and praise the Lord.
JOSH BILLINGS
WORTHINESS
It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
Be free, all worthy spirits, and stretch yourselves, for greatness and for height.
GEORGE CHAPMAN
As my Great Aunt Maude always said, to own a priceless treasure one must first be worthy of it.
ARTEMUS GORDON THE WILD, WILD WEST
Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.
HENRY FIELDING
MAN: Do you belong here? FONZIE: I belong everywhere.
HAPPY DAYS
We are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
JONI MITCHELL
Worth seeing? Yes, but not worth going to see.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
WRITING
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
MARK TWAIN
Type faster.
ISAAC ASIMOV when asked what he would do if he had only six months to live
In the afternoons, Gertrude Stein and I used to go antique hunting in the local shops, and I remember once asking her if she thought I should become a writer. In the typically cryptic way we were all enchanted with, she said, "No." I took that to mean yes and sailed for Italy the next day.
Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?" and when she says, "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have a start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW when a young playwright asked whether he should continue writing plays
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
GENE FOWLER
If you want to be a writer—stop talking about it and sit down and write!
JACKIE COLLINS
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.
RUDYARD KIPLING
Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else and usually it is reading his own handwriting.
G. NORMAN COLLIE
One may not have written it well enough for others to know, but you're in love with truth when you discover it at the point of a pencil. That, in and by itself, is one of the few rare pleasures in life.
NORMAN MAILER
Beware of the man who denounces women writers; his penis is tiny
cannot spell.
ERICA JONG
I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around.
POET LOUISE BOGAN on her love affair with poet Theodore Roethke
It's the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Why don't you write books people can read?
NORA JOYCE to her husband, James
When I want to read a book, I write one.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
I always say, keep a diary and someday it'll keep you.
MAE WEST
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved—to write a book.
EDWARD GIBBON
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
J. P. DONLEAVY
I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not.
FANNIE HURST
ZEAL
Zeal is very blind, or badly regulated, when it encroaches upon the rights of others.
QUESNEL
Zeal is fire without light.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul.
CHARLES BUXTON
Copyright © 1996 Prelude Press, Inc. site credits