Avarice Quotes

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
― Socrates

“We Lannisters do have a certain pride," said Tyrion Lannister.

“Pride?” Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy manner made her angry. “Arrogance, some might call it. Arrogance and avarice and lust for power.”

“My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?” He grinned.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“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.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

“Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it.”
― Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes

“Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Avarice, he assured them, was the one passion that grew stronger and sweeter in old age.”
― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

“Said will be a little ahead, but done should follow at his heel.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“For avarice begins where poverty ends.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions

“There is no place, it seems, free from the intrusion of Man, who stretches out his hand for everything, even that which is in the air.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter

“Envy is Pride's infection on inspiration...while Angered then Eaten by the Greed of a Lazy Lust.”
― Criss Jami

“Do you know what people want most?

Something somebody else has.”
― Larfleeze

“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?”
― Larfleeze

“The avarice of dwarves and the arrogance of elves are well known. But so are the temptations of humans.”
― Neha Teena, The Keeper of Rhymes

“Pretty much all wealthy people who were willing to lose and have lost their health while chasing wealth are now willing to lose their wealth while chasing health.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.”
― Jonathan Swift

“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.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

“Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They’re all alike. The world is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine-fucking!—It’s all alike. Pay ’em money to cut off the world’s cock. Pay money, money, money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave ’em all little twiddling machines.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“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.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

“Compassion is the Gateway to Moral Innocence and Avarice’s Defeat”
― Jason Cain

“Inanimate objects and sentient beings obey the laws of nature without discrimination. Conscience is the only objection”
― Jason Cain

“A man who has caught a billion is not nearly as admirable as a boy (or even a man) who was caught by a million.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Unhappy Land, whose Blessings tempt the Sword.

Eclogue the Fourth. Agib and Secander; or the Fugitives”
― William Collins, Gray and Collins: Poetical Works

“Her words were like knives to his conscience, and as much as avarice dulled their blades, her tongue sharpened them.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“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.”
― St. Peter of Damascus

“Night fell. Yet, despite the day’s grueling efforts to rummage for food and secure safe habitation, the forest and its inhabitants drifted off to sleep in perfect unison. And I thought that none of them jostled for the position of another, or sought some better position for themselves out of avarice or greed or some baser agenda. Rather, each played its role admirably and found that in doing so all of those roles meshed in a now stilled unity. And staring at the stars with the crickets gently lulling a satisfied world to sleep, I wondered why we can’t be more like the woods.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“If you find your heart very desolated and afflicted at the loss of property, believe me, you love it too much. The strongest proof of love for a lost object is suffering over its loss... We must never allow money or possessions to have any place in our hearts.
On Avarice vs. Generosity”
― Brant Pitre, Introduction to the Spiritual Life: Walking the Path of Prayer with Jesus

“Courage is doing what is right and necessary, regardless of peril. Your parents were brave. Your grandmother was brave. Endangering yourself or others for the sake of wealth? Risking lives for a chance at ill-gotten gain? This is not courage. It is avarice.”
― Jake Wyatt, The Well

“Such a tendency has the slave trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men - No, it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel.”
― Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano