24 Quotes About Greed

One gains by losing self for others and not by hoarding for oneself.

It ill becomes the servant to seek to be rich, and great, and honored in that world where his Lord was poor, and mean, and despised.

Riches enlarge, rather than satisfy appetites.

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

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

That which is won ill, will never wear well, for there is a curse attends it which will waste it. The same corrupt dispositions which incline men to sinful ways of getting, will incline them to the like sinful ways of spending.

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

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.

A civil guest will no more talk all, than eat all the feast.

You may as soon fill a bag with wisdom, a chest with virtue, or a circle with a triangle, as the heart of man with anything here below. A man may have enough of the world to sink him, but he can never have enough to satisfy him.

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

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

Wouldst thou both eat they cake and have it?

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.

I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception.

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.

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.

As long as you want anything very much, especially more than you want God, it is an idol.

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

Be thrifty, but not covetous.

There is a perpetual frost in the pockets of some rich people; as soon as they put their hands into them, they are frozen so they cannot draw out their purses. Had I my way, I would hang all misers; but reversing the common mode, I would hang them up by the heels, that their money might run out of their pockets.

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

He repents in thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.

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