Echoes

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

Every prodigal appears to be a public enemy, and every frugal man a public benefactor. By what a frugal man annually saves, he not only affords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands for that or the ensuing year, but, like the founder of a public workhouse, he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.

True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, 'Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel Catch-22 has earned in its entire history?' And Joe said, 'I've got something he can never have.' And I said, 'What on earth could that be, Joe?' And Joe said, 'The knowledge that I've got enough.' Not bad!

He is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.

Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.

I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

He who loses his money is forsaken by his friends, his wife, his servants, and his relations; yet when he regains his riches those who have forsaken him come back to him. Hence wealth is certainly the best of relations.

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.

Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth.

Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth.

The man who dies rich dies disgraced.

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.

That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.

The liberal man will give to the right people, the right amounts, and at the right time, with all the other qualifications that accompany right giving; and that with pleasure or at least without pain.

The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. (15)