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Avarice Quotes

Browse 307 quotes about Avarice.

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Avarice Quotes

“forgetfulness. Forgetfulness breeds self-love - the love of one's own will and thoughts - which is equivalent to the love of pleasure and praise. From self-love comes avarice, the root of all evils (cf. 1 Tim. 6:10), for it entangles us in worldly concerns and in this way leads to complete unawareness of God's gifts and of our own faults. It is now that the eight ruling passions take up residence: gluttony, which leads to unchastity, which breeds avarice, which gives rise to anger when we fail to attain what we want - that is, fail to have our own way. This produces dejection, and dejection engenders first listlessness and then self-esteem; and self-esteem leads to pride. From these eight passions come every evil, passion and sin. Those consumed by them are led to despair and utter destruction; they fall away from God and become like the demons, as has already been said.”

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Author:St. Peter of Damascus
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“The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts--and let's face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field--is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...”

EvilMoneyGoodWickednessAvariceExpertRareDetestableDilutesLoathsome
Book:The Eyre Affair
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“Defined simply, narcissism means excessive self-preoccupation; pragmatism means excessive focus on work, achievement, and the practical concerns of life; and restlessness means an excessive greed for experience, an overeating, not in terms of food but in terms of trying to drink in too much of life...And constancy of all three together account for the fact that we are so habitually self-absorbed by heartaches, headaches, and greed for experience that we rarely find the time and space to be in touch with the deeper movements inside of and around us.”

MeditationSolitudeGreedInner PeaceLustHeartacheNarcissismAvariceHeadacheRestlessnessPragmatismHedonism
Book:The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality
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“There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather—for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man—that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men’s lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this—not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time and labour.”

SinGreedKarmaAvariceImmoralityRalph Nickleby
Book:Nicholas Nickleby
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“I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea.”

MoneyRichGreedInequalityPossibleComprehensionFamineAvarice
Book:The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
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“Why money should be so precious to an Ass too dull and mean to exchange it for any other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the earth and sky but the three letters L. S. D.—not Luxury, Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters. Your concentrated Fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in money-breeding.”

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Book:Our Mutual Friend
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“Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible.”

HumorFunnyQuotesProgressImpossibleHumourCivilizationHumorousCapitalismQuoteProfoundGreedPhilosopherQuote Of The DaySelfishMental IllnessSelfishnessThoughtfulSatireMaterialismThought ProvokingCivilizedDeepInsightfulAphorismSelflessSouth AfricaQuotationsSelflessnessAfricaGreedyMaximsSayingsPossibleAdagesProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkAvariceContagiousAxiomsAdageProverbSatiricalSayingEpigramsAfricanQuotationCovetousnessGnomeMentally IllSatiristMaximEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAxiomDictumDictumsSouth AfricanSatiristsCivilizeCupidityAcquisitivenessMercenarinessRapacity
Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged.”

SpiritualityChristianityPrideTheologyDiscipleshipAvariceReligious EducationMortification Of Sin
Book:Dark night of the soul
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“There is nothing more to chasing after wealth than the wastage of a person’s noble life for that which has no value. Instead he could have earned a high rank (in Paradise) and everlasting bliss, but he lost this due to his craving after provision – which had already been assured to him and allotted to him, and it was not possible for anything to come to him except what was decreed for him – then on top of this he does not benefit from that, but rather abandons it and leaves it for someone else. He departs from that and leaves it behind so that he will be the one held accountable for it, yet someone else benefits from it. So in reality he is only gathering it, yet someone else benefits from it. So in reality he is only gathering it for someone who will not praise him for that, whilst he himself goes on to One who will not excuse him for that – this itself would indeed be enough to show the blameworthiness of this craving.”

WealthGreedAvariceStatusSayings Of Prophet MuhammadIslamic Literature
Author:Ibn Rajab The Evil of Craving for Wealth and Status
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“Nicole: You're a funny looking creature. Larfleeze: Pfft! I'm not the one without a snout! Nicole: I can sense the empty void within you. Larfleeze: You must mean my stomach! I haven't eaten in two hours! Nicole: No. There is a pit inside you that you have been trying to fill for centuries. I am here to give you hope. Larfleeze: You know where I can find my lantern?! Nicole: Your parents are still alive. And they still miss you. Larfleeze: They... do?”

AvariceComicsGreen LanternGeoff JohnsLarfleezeHope Brightest Day
Author:Larfleeze
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“From the subtle afflictions caused by love of status is seeking after and aspiring positions of authority – this is something whose reality is hidden and obscure. It is not understood except by those who have knowledge of Allah, those who love Him and who are at enmity with those ignorant ones from His creation who desire to compete with Him with regard to His Lordship and Divinity and right to worship, despite their despicability and the contemptible position they have before Allah and in the eyes of His chosen servants who have knowledge of Him. Know that love of status attained by having one’s orders and prohibitions obeyed and enacted, and by merely the attainment of a position above the people and to have importance over them, and that it be seen that the people are in need of him and seek their needs from him – then the soul of this person is seeking to compete with Allah in His Lordship and His Divinity and right to worship. Some such people may even seek to put the people into such a condition of need that they are compelled to request their needs from them, and to display their poverty before them and their need of them. Then he is inflated with pride and self-importance because of that, whereas this befits none except Allah alone.”

WealthGreedAvariceStatusIslamic Literature
Author:Ibn Rajab The Evil of Craving for Wealth and Status
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“You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that they turned their backs on the sufferings of others, and left them in pain; those whose greed meant that others starved and died. Such souls belong here, because they would find no peace elsewhere. In this place, they are understood. In this place, their faults have meaning. In this place, they belong.”

SufferingPeaceSinHellWorstSorrowAngerMurderGreedVanityMeaningBelongingRemorseWrathKillAvariceFinding PeaceSinsSufferBelong
Author:John Connolly
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“What will you do if your product still further increases next year? You should then destroy again the warehouses which you are now preparing to build, and build bigger. For the reason why God has given you fruitful harvests is that He might either overcome your avarice or condemn it; wherefore you can have no excuse. But you keep for yourself what He wished to be produced through you for the benefit of many - nay, rather, you rob even yourself of it, since you would better preserve it for yourself if you distributed it to others.”

IfsShouldYearsStillsReasonMightNextGivenProductsBenefitsOvercomingBiggerIncreaseExcusePreservesReason WhyConsumerismPreparingHarvestNext YearAvariceNo ExcusesOverconsumptionWarehouse
Author:Ambrose
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“The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.”

NaturalWealthInterestingVirtueSecurityCircumstancesWeaknessConcernedPropertyPossessionValuableOur FamilyDistinctionBelongingBenevolenceAvariceAncestryTransmissionHereditarySubservientPerpetuating
Book:Reflections on the French Revolution
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“See how the world (whose chaste and pregnant womb Of late conceiv'd, and brought forth nothing ill) Is now degenerated, and become A base adult'ress, whose false births do fill The earth with monsters, monsters that do roam And rage about, and make a trade to kill: Now glutt'ny paunches, and avarice a pawn; Pale envy pines, pride swells, and sloth begins to yawn.”

WorldEarthPrideBirthLateAdultsTradeIllEnvyRageMonstersPregnantPaleWombAvariceSlothPawnsChaste
Book:Quarles' Emblems
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“For what is there more hideous than avarice, more brutal than lust, more contemptible than cowardice, more base than stupidity and folly?”

StupidityLustFollyCowardiceBrutalAvariceHideous
Book:The treatises of M.T. Cicero on the nature of the gods [tr. by T.Francklin]; on divination; on fate; on the republic; on the laws; and on standing for the consulship, tr. chiefly by the ed. C.D.Yonge [and F.Barham].
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