Inspirational Quotes on Greed

“Let us, Sir, embrace some system or other before we end this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out: name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight, when you have something to fight for. If you murder, rob; if you kill, take possession; and do not appear in the character of madmen as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counsels guide you!”

“Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

“There is nothing more appalling than the wholesale way in which unthinking people plead to the Almighty the richest and most spiritual of His promises, and claim their immediate fulfillment, without themselves fulfilling one of the conditions either on which they are promised or can possibly be given.”

“When our Savior drove the sheep and oxen out of the temple, He did not drive them into His own pasture; nor sweep the coin into His own pockets, when He overturned the table of the money-changers.”

“Desire is insatiable as death, but He who fills all in all can fill it. The capacity of our wishes who can measure? But the immeasurable wealth of God can more than overflow it.”

“Superficial efficiency seems cheaper at first, but it costs more the long run, with the cost being pushed off onto someone other than the one who saves a few bucks.”

“All God's plans have the mark of the cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them.... But men's plans ignore the offence of the cross or despise it. Men's plans have no profound, stern or self-immolating denial in them. Their gain is of the world.”

“All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.”

“He is not poor that hath not much, but he that craves much.”

“He repents in thorns that sleeps in beds of roses. ”

“The pursuit of things robs me of investing more in the work of Christ.”

“If your desires be endless, your cares and fears will be so, too.”

“There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.”

“Five, or six, ten people shall be made temporarily wretched because one person, unconsciously perhaps, yet supremely, egotistic and selfish, has never learned to control his disposition and bridle his tongue.”

“Men never think their fortunes too great, nor their wit too little.”

“For the world says: 'You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don’t be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires.' It is in this that they see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants. ...Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners visits, carriages, rank, and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honour and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. ...And therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits? What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.”

“The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.”

“Be thrifty, but not covetous.”

“The antidote for covetousness is contentment. The two are in opposition. Whereas the covetous, greedy person worships himself, the contented person worships God. Contentment comes from trusting God.”

“Desires are the pulses of the soul;--as physicians judge by the appetite, so may you by desires.”