Top 85 Covetousness Quotes & Sayings

Covetousness is the greatest misfortune. One who does not know what is enough will never have enough.

The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.

Covetousness is the greatest of monsters, as well as the root of all evil.

There are three things which the superior man guards against. In youth ... lust. When he is strong ... quarrelsomeness. When he is old ... covetousness.

Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.

The covetous man feareth not God. This also is plain from the word because it setteth covetousness and the fear of God in direct opposition. Men that fear God are said to hate covetousness, Exod. xviii. 21. Besides the covetous man is called an idolater and is said to have no part in the kingdom of Christ and of God, Col. iii. 5. And again; 'The wicked boasteth of his heart's desire and blesseth the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth,' Psa. x. 3.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

True it is that covetousness is rich, modesty starves.

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

Envy is of all others the most ungratifying and disconsolate passion. There is power for ambition, pleasure for luxury, and pelf even for covetousness; but envy gets no reward but vexation.

The case of the Baconians is not won until it has been proved that the substitution of covetousness for wantlessness, or an ascending spiral of desires for a stable requirement of necessities, leads to a happier condition.

I have heard thousands of confessions, but never one of covetousness.

Satisfaction consists in the cutting off of the causes of the sin. Thus, fasting is the proper antidote to lust; prayer to pride, to envy, anger and sloth; alms to covetousness.

All sin is selfish, whether it be lying, cheating, stealing, immorality, covetousness, or idleness. Sin is for one's own ends, not for another's-certainly not for the Lord's ends.

Let us again clothe ourselves with these proved and sterling virtues - honesty, truthfulness, chastity, sobriety, temperance, industry, and thrift; let us discard all covetousness and greed.

Shall I tell you of their plundering, their covetousness, their abandonment of the poor, their thefts, their cheating in trade?

The character of covetousness, is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.

Covetousness teaches people to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of care and malice; and after all this, it is for no good to itself, for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it has snatched.

To know how to distinguish the agitation arising from covetousness, from the agitation arising from principles, to fight the one and aid the other, in this lies the genius and the power of great revolutionary leaders.

The curse of covetousness is that it destroys manhood by substituting money for character.

The evils of the body are murder, theft, and adultery; of the tongue, lying, slander, abuse and idle talk; of the mind, covetousness, hatred and error.

But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

Covetousness bursts the sack and spills the grain.

Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.

Covetousness is ever attended with solicitude and anxiety.

There is no such thing as material covetousness. All covetousness is spiritual. ...Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.

One be covetous when he has little, much or anything between, for covetousness comes from the heart, not from the circumstances of life.

When workmen strive to do better than well, they do confound their skill in covetousness.

Luxury... corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

When there is firm conquest over covetousness, they who have conquered it wake up to the how and why of life.

If you don't work yourself up into a fever of greed and covetousness in an art museum, you're just not doing the job.

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen.

I think if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a better world for all of us.

The religious leader is the most untrustworthy of leaders; in no other station do we have so many opportunities for pride, covetousness and lust, and with so many excellent disguises to keep such ignobility from being found out and called to account.

If you would abolish covetousness, you must abolish its mother, profusion.

advertising confuses values ... By appealing either to fear, or to vanity, or to covetousness, it very skillfully insinuates false values.

Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

Do not underestimate what you specific conventional, nor covetousness others. He who envies others does not terra firma organization of intellect.

What vice could be worse than covetousness? What is more sinful than slander? For one who is truthful, what need is there for austerity? For one who has a clean heart, what is the need for pilgrimage?.

The whole attempt to advance the kind of consumer society that depends for its growth on the ceaseless stimulation of unlimited covetousness among the rich, while the poor majority rot in their poverty-this is surely something against which a Christian should be a nonconformist.

There are three things to beware of through life: when a man is young, let him beware of his appetites; when he is middle-aged, of his passions; and when old, of covetousness, especially.

Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness.

Youth covets; let not this covetousness seduce you.

...Covetousness, looking more at what we would have than at what we have.

There are three things against which the wise man guards: lust when young, quarrels when strong, and covetousness when old.

It [covetousness] is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.

The avenues in my neighborhood are Pride, Covetousness and Lust; the cross streets are Anger, Gluttony, Envy and Sloth. I live over on Sloth, and the style on our street is to avoid the other thoroughfares.

Pity that gold should always bring with it the canker - covetousness.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

Though we take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; you cannot bereave him of his covetousness.

Conscience and covetousness are never to be reconciled; like fire and water they always destroy each other, according to the predominancy of the element.

That plenty should produce either covetousness or prodigality is a perversion of providence; and yet the generality of men are the worse for their riches.

Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

It was left for the present age to endow Covetousness with glamour on a big scale, and to give it a title which it could carry like a flag. It occurred to somebody to call it Enterprise. From the moment of that happy inspiration, Covetousness has gone forward and never looked back.

As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.

A human-being is not a human-being while his tendencies include self-indulgence, covetousness, temper and attacking other people

Covetousness, like a candle ill made, smothers the splendor of a happy fortune in its own grease.

Covetousness, anger and foolishness are things to sort out well. When bad things happen in the world, if you look at them comparatively, they are not unrelated to these three things.