Wealth

[A] man's best wealth ought to be himself.
~ William Austin, in Literary Papers of William Austin, with a Biographical Sketch by His Son (1890). The Late Joseph Natterstrom (orig. in 'New England Magazine'; July 1831)

I have mental joys and mental health,
Mental friends and mental wealth,
I've a wife that I love and that loves me;
I've all but riches bodily.
~ William Blake, I rose up at the dawn of day.

The countless gold of a merry heart,
The rubies and pearls of a loving eye,
The indolent never can bring to the mart,
Nor the secret hoard up in his treasury.
~ William Blake, Gnomic Verses xx. Riches

The merchants are rich enough;
Can they not help themselves?
~ William Blake, from Poetical Sketches (1783). King Edward the Third

If you want to know how rich you really are, find out what would be left of you tomorrow if you should lose every dollar you own tonight.
~ William J.H. Boetcker

But I have learned a thing or two; I know as sure as fate,
When we lock up our lives for wealth, the gold key comes too late.
~ William McKendree ("Will") Carleton, from Rhymes Of Our Planet (1895). The Ancient Miner's Story

To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth ought not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), On The Elevation of The Labouring Classes (1840). Lecture II. Part I

Wealth worship must cease.
~ William Ellery Channing, in Dr. Channing's Note-book (1887). Society -- the State

Ah, who would then be richer?
My wealth is all divine --
The clouds, the stars, the prairies,
The world, the world, is mine.
~ William Lawrence ("Larry") Chittenden, Ranch Verses (1893). Texas: To Judge A. H. Willie

Wealth governs this country, and wealth uses military violence to control the rest of the world as best it can. And we're responsible, and we will pay the price for it.
~ (William) Ramsey Clark, Speech, Rally Against Sanctions on Iraq, Los Angeles, CA (1998). U.S. Will Pay Price for Rule of the Rich

Curst be the gold and silver which persuade
Weak men to follow far-fatiguing trade.
~ William Collins, Oriental Eclogues (1742). II, Hassan; or, The Camel Driver

I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book II. The Time-Piece

The rich make life more interesting: they are a luxury a civilized society should be able to afford.
~ William C. Davis, The Rich: A Study of the Species (1982).

Wealth has no source but labor.
~ William Maxwell Evarts, Centennial Oration at Independence Hall. Philadelphia PA (4 July 1876).

If you do not have the capacity for happiness with a little money, great wealth will not bring it to you.
~ William Feather, The Business of Life (1949).

Wealth flows from energy and ideas.
~ William Feather

I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one's children. It's not constructive for them.
~ Bill Gates, The Associated Press (11 November 2002). Gates Vows $100M in India AIDS Fight

My value is still so much higher than I ever expected it to be by a factor of about 50. So the fact that at one point it was say, a factor of 60, well -- that wealth is all going back to society anyway.
~ Bill Gates, in The New York Times (6 November 2002). Bill Gates Views What He's Sown in Libraries

The prosperity of all is the interest of all.
~ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.
~ Billy Graham, from The Quotable Billy Graham (1966).

What is the meaning of wealth and economic growth if the world is someday choking on its own luxuriously wasteful consumption?
~ William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997). Three. The Ghost of Marx

The barbarous gold barons -- they did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them!
~ William D. "Big Bill" Haywood

Who strives to get, and strives to save,
In ten years time will riches have.
~ William Hutton, from Poems, chiefly tales (1804). Maxims

The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays, First Series (1919). Patriotism

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There must be thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures XIV and XV: The Value of Saintliness

[I] define capital as consisting of all useful objects which, in supplying a laborer's ordinary wants and desires, enable him to undertake works of which the result will be deferred for a greater or less space of time. Capital, in short, is nothing but maintenance of laborers.
~ William (W.) Stanley Jevons, in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (June 1866). Account of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy

The man who makes the acquisition of wealth the goal and ultimatum of his life, seeing it as an end rather than a means to an end, is not true. Why does the world usually make wealth the criterion of success, and riches the synonym of attainment? Real success in life means the individual's conquest of himself; it means "how he has bettered himself" not "how he has bettered his fortune." The great question of life is not "What have I?" but "What am I?"
~ William George Jordan, The Power of Truth: Individual Problems and Possibilities (1902). The Power of Truth

You would have wealth, and tell of the good you would do with it. Truly will you lose your way under these conditions. It is quite possible, that you are as rich as you ever will be, therefore, desire to do good with what you have -- and do it.
~ William Q. Judge, The Path (August 1886). Musings On The True Theosophist's Path

When all treasures are tried ... truth is the fairest.
~ William Langland, A Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman (or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman; c. 1362).

It is difficult to see why lace should be so expensive. It is mostly holes, and holes are cheap.
~ Mary Wilson Little, from Reveries of a Paragrapher (1897). Night Thoughts

This is our true wealth -- the riches we take with us, the joy we carry inside, the support we learn to give ourselves, and the self-loving that flows as a natural by-product of that support.
~ Peter McWilliams, DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts (1994). Part Six: Living Your Dreams

There's nothing so comfortable as a small bankroll. A big one is always in danger.
~ Wilson Mizner

Possessions are usually diminished by possession.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882).

Trade will increase trade, and money will beget money, and the trading world shall need no more to want work for their hands, but will rather want hands for their work.
~ William Paterson, (c. 1698).

Those who condemn wealth are those who have none and see no chance of getting it.
~ William Penn Patrick, (1967)

Labour is the father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the mother.
~ Sir William Petty, A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions (1662).

Now there are two sorts of Riches; one actual, and the other potential.
~ Sir William Petty, A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions (1662). Chapter 15: Of Excise

When you are young and impecunious, society conditions you to exchange time for money, and this is quite as it should be. Very few people are hurt by having to work for a living. But as you become more affluent, it somehow is very, very difficult to reverse that process and begin trading money for time.
~ William H. Rehnquist, in Time Magazine (13 June 1988).

We'll show the world we are prosperous, even if we have to go broke to do it.
~ Will Rogers

Grace and gold can live together; but the smallest degree of the former in the heart, is preferable to a chain of the latter about the neck.
~ William Secker, from The Nonsuch Professor in His Meridian Splendor, or the Singular Actions of Sanctified Christians (1660).

The greatness of our estates is no argument of the goodness of our hearts.
~ William Secker, from The Nonsuch Professor in His Meridian Splendor, or the Singular Actions of Sanctified Christians (1660).

For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.
~ William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. Act IV, scene ii

Gold that's put to use more gold begets.
~ William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593).

Gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

How quickly nature falls into revolt
When gold becomes her object!
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II. Act IV, scene v

I am not worthy of the wealth I owe,
Nor dare I say 'tis mine, and yet it is;
But, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal
What law does vouch mine own.
~ William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well

I am wealthy in my friends.
~ William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. Act II, scene ii

I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;
If wealthily, then happily in Padua.
~ William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. Act I, scene ii

If thou are rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

It is noised he hath a mass of treasure.
~ William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. Act IV, scene iii

My love's more richer than my tongue.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear. Act I, scene i

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.
~ William Shakespeare, Othello. Act III, scene iii

She is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
~ William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store,
So thou being rich in will, add to thy will
One will of mine, to make thy large will more.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 135

The wealthy curled darlings of our nation.
~ William Shakespeare, Othello

Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,
Since riches point to misery and contempt?
~ William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. Act IV, scene ii

There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.
~ William De Witt (W.D.) Snodgrass, Heart's Needle (1959). April Inventory

Men of routine or men who can do what they are told are not hard to find; but men who can think and plan and tell the routine men what to do are very rare. They are paid in proportion to the supply and demand of them.
~ William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883). Chapter III: That It Is Not Wicked To Be Rich; Nay, Even, That It Is Not Wicked To Be Richer Than One's Neighbor

Riches have never yet given anybody either peace or rest.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday, from The Real Billy Sunday: The Life and Work of Rev. William Ashley Sunday, D.D., The Baseball Evangelist (1914). XV: Some of Sunday's Sayings

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet, in The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart., Vol. III (1757). An Essay Upon The Different Conditions Of Life And Fortune

To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians (1857-59). Chapter 24: From Oakhurst to Tunbridge

I have had no real gratification or enjoyment of any sort more than my neighbor on the next block who is worth only half a million.
~ William Henry Vanderbilt

Inherited wealth is a real handicap to happiness. It is as certain death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.
~ William Kissam Vanderbilt, (1905 interview)

It must sound horrible, but I'm really rich. It's all right in America, isn't it?
~ Robbie Williams, The Daily Mirror (20 February 2003). Robbie: I'm Looking For A Wife

[E]xcessive wealth is neither glory nor happiness.
~ William Wirt, from The Old Bachelor (1812).

These times strike monied worldlings with dismay:
Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air
With words of apprehension and despair.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume II (1807). October, 1803

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills ...
~ William Butler Yeats, I. Ancestral Houses