A Quote by Charles Caleb Colton

Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.

Charles Caleb Colton

Quote Topics

Accumulation Avarice Calculating Destroyed Expenditure Fortunes Insatiable Lust Many Men More Ruined Than Thoughtlessness

Quote Author

Charles Caleb Colton
English - Writer
1780 - 1832

Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Some men make fortunes, but not to enjoy them for, blinded by avarice, they live to make fortunes.

Juvenal

It is observed in the course of worldly things, that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues; and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby than by vices.

Walter Raleigh

The avarice of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols was pay enough; but now, when this sum has become customary, men always want more and more without end.

Aristotle

For what is there more hideous than avarice, more brutal than lust, more contemptible than cowardice, more base than stupidity and folly?

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

Charles Caleb Colton

Sure of their qualities and demanding praise, more go to ruined fortunes than are raised.

Alexander Pope

Avarice is insatiable, and is always pushing on for more.

Roger L'Estrange

In the sex-war, thoughtlessness is a weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. Both are reciprocally generated, but a woman's desire for revenge outlasts all other emotion. Yet when every unkind word about women has been said, we have still to admit, with Byron, that they are nicer than men. They are more devoted, more unselfish and more emotionally sincere. When the long fuse of cruelty, deceit and revenge is set alight, it is male thoughtlessness which has fired it.

Cyril Connolly

Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.

Charles Caleb Colton

According to Solomon, life and death are in the power of the tongue; and as Euripides truly affirmeth, every unbridled tongue in the end shall find itself unfortunate; for in all that ever I observed in the course of worldly things, I ever found that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues, and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby, also, than by their vices.

Walter Raleigh

Prodigality is indeed the vice of a weak nature, as avarice is of a strong one; it comes of a weak craving for those blandishments of the world which are easily to be had for money, and which, when obtained, are as much worse than worthless as a harlot's love is worse than none.