Sunday, October 31, 2010

What's a Heavy Curse in a Fool's Pocket?

auntnanny said it ...Image by bunchofpants via FlickrNothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want. – Jonathon Swift


What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. This same tendency, operating with increasing force, is observable in our civilization today, showing itself in every progressive community, and with greater intensity the more progressive the community. – Henry George


Golden shackles are far worse than iron ones. – Mohandas ghandhi


Abundance is a blessing to the wise;
The use of riches in discretion lies;
Learn this, ye men of wealth – a heavy purse
In a fool’s pocket is a heavy curse.


To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art. – Confucius

Buy cheap, sell dear. – Thomas Lodge


Saturday, October 30, 2010

Going to Hell in Embroidrery

Embroidery SampleImage by Urban Combing (Ultrastar175g) via FlickrWatch lest prosperity destroy generosity. – Henry Ward Beecher




Better go to heaven in rags than to hell in embroidery. – Proverb



A fortune is usually the greatest of misfortunes to children. It takes the muscles out of the limbs, the brain out of the head, and virtue out of the heart. – Henry Ward Beecher



It is poor encouragement to toil through life to amass a fortune to ruin your children. In nine cases out of ten, a large fortune is the greatest curse which could be bequeathed to the young and inexperienced. – Jean de la Bruyere



To acquire wealth is difficult, to preserve it more difficult, but to spend it wisely most difficult of all. – Edward Parsons Day



Riches enlarge, rather than satisfy appetite. – Thomas Fuller


Friday, October 29, 2010

Why Worldly Riches are like Nuts

Porsche Carrera GT Lock NutImage by ChrisMRichards via FlickrThe rich never feel so good as when they are speaking of their possessions as responsibilities. – Robert Lynd




For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca



The rich are the real outcasts of society, and special missions should be organized for them. – Norman Macleod

Keep company with the very rich and you’ll end up picking up the check. – Stanley Walker

To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober. – Logan Pearsall Smith

Worldly riches are like nuts; many clothes are torn in getting them, many a tooth broke in cracking them, but never a belly filled with eating them. – Ralph Venning


Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Journey from Rage to Wretchedness

The Hughes H-4 Hercules with Howard Hughes at ...Image via WikipediaA man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. – Henry David Throreau




Nowadays, we think of a philanthropist as someone who donates big sums of money, yet the word is derived from two Greek words, philos (loving) and anthropos (man); loving man. All of us are capable of being philanthropists. We can give of ourselves. – Edward Lindsey



It is tragic that Howard Hughes had to die to prove that he was alive. – Walter Kane



The prosperous man is never sure that he is loved for himself. – Marcus Lucan



The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. – Gore Vidal



Sometimes the pilgrimage from rags to riches is a journey from rage to wretchedness. – R.W. Huber


Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Watching Catastrophes from the Terrace

Hampton TerraceImage via WikipediaWealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it. – Benjamin Franklin




A man’s true wealth is the good he does in this world. – Mohammed



Only the brave deserve the fair, but only the rich, fat, cowardly merchants can afford same. – Chinese Proverb



Don’t try to die rich but live rich. – Thomas Bird Mosher



The privelede of the great is to see catastrophes from a terrace. – Jean Giradoux



The best way to realize the pleasure of feeling rich is to live in a smaller house tthanyour means would entitle you to have. – Edward Clarke




Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Art of Living Like a Poor Man with Lots of Money

Reflection in a soap bubble.Image via WikipediaI’d like to be rich enough so that I could throw soap away after the letters are worn off. – Andy Rooney




All heiresses are beautiful. – John Dryden



He has so much money that he could afford to look poor. – Edgar Wallace



In wealth many friends, in poverty not even relations. – anonymous



It is better to live rich than to die rich. – Samuel Johnson



I’d like to live like a poor man with lots of money. - Pablo Picasso


Saturday, October 23, 2010

With money in your pocket, you are wise, and you are handsome, and you sing well too

It Is All RelativeImage by Lorenzo Pasqualis via FlickrNo man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger – It is the heart that makes a man rich – He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has. – Henry Ward Beecher




Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them. – Francis Bacon



Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much and wants more. – Charles Caleb Colton



Money doesn’t buy friends but it allows a better class of enemies. – Lord Mancroft



A rich man is one who isn’t afraid to ask the salesman to show him something cheaper. – Ladies Home Journal



With money in your pocket, you are wise, and you are handsome, and you sing well too. – Jewish Proverb




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Friday, October 22, 2010

Wealth Creates More Wants than it Supplies

Image of Peter Popoff on letters requesting mo...Image via WikipediaI don’t think one can spend oneself rich. – Rhoda Thomas Tripp




The rich would have to eat money, but luckily the poor provide food. – Russian Proverb



Some folks seem to get the idea that they’re worth a lot of money just because they have it. – Seth Parker



He is a great simpleton who imagines that the chief power of wealth is to supply wants. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it creates more wants than it supplies. – anonymous



The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell. – John Foster



There are men who gain from their wealth only the fear of losing it. – Antoine Rivaroli




Thursday, October 21, 2010

Rich Men Without Convictions

Karma ChameleonImage by Today is a good day via Flickr
A man who has a million dollars is as well off as if he were rich. – John Jacob Astor




Until the age of twelve I sincerely believed that everybody had a house on Fifth Avenue, a villa in Newport and a steam-driven, ocean-going yacht. – Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.



Well, yes. You could say we have independent means. – John D. Rlockefeller



You are affluent when you buy what you want, do what you wish, and don’t give a thought to what it costs. – J.P. Morgan



Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity. – George Bernard Shaw



Wealth consists not in having great possesions, but in having few wants. – Epicurus




Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Lack of Optimistic Brokeness

EmancipationImage by Hanna L. via Flickr
An optimist is always broke. – Frank McKinney Hubbard




A miser is ever in want. – Greek Proverb



They who have little are thought to have no right to anything. – John Lancaster Spalding



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



Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. – Ayn Rand



Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband. – Henry Louis Mencken




Tuesday, October 19, 2010

A New Disease: Lack-O-Money

070523 We interrupt this party ...Image by xjyxjy via Flickr
There were times my pants were so thin that I could sit on a dime and tell if it were heads or tails. – Spencer Tracy




He who has no bread has no authority. – Turkish Proverb



We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think. – Lord Rutherford



Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called a lack of money. – Francois Rabelais



I must say I hate money, but it’s the lack of it I hate most. – Katherine Mansfield



Necessity knows no Sunday. – Agnes Repplier


Monday, October 18, 2010

A Kind of Spritual Snobbery

Spiritual Healing Open Air 2005Image by Udo Herzog via Flickr
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. – Albert Camus




Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means. – Van Wyck Brooks



To have money is to be virtuous, honest, beautiful and witty. And to be without is to be ugly and boring and stupid and useless. – Jean Giradoux



When you're down and out something always turns up – and it’s usually the noses of your friends. – Orson Welles



When a man says money can do everything, that settles it; he hasn’t any – Edgar Watson Howe



A deficit is what you have when you haven’t got as much as you had when you had nothing. – Gerald F. Liberman




Sunday, October 17, 2010

Money Never Goes to Jail

The Eiffel Tower, Paris. View from below.Image via WikipediaTwo men were walking along a crowded sidewalk in a down-town business area. Suddenly one exclaimed, “Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket.” But the other could not hear. He asked his companion how he could detect the sound of a cricket amid the din of people and traffic. The first man, who was a zoologist, had traineed himself to listen to the voice of nature. But he didn’t explain. He simply took a coin out of his pocket and dropped it to the sidewalk, whereupon a dozen people began to look about them. “We hear,” he said, “what we listen for.” – Kermit L. Long




If American men are obsessed with money, American women are obsessed with weight. The men talk of gain, the women talk of loss, and I do not know which talk is more boring. – Marya Mannes



Money never goes to jail. – Arab proverb



I like Paris. They don’t talk so much of money, but more of sex. – Vera Stravinsky



It is extraordinary to what an expense of time and money people will go to get something for nothing. – Robert Lynd



A man’s treatment of money is the most decisive test of his character – how he makes it and how he spends it. – James Moffatt




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Saturday, October 16, 2010

What do a Mistress and Cancer Have in Common?

OKINAWA SOBA'S FORMER MISTRESSImage by Okinawa Soba via Flickr
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. – Henry Lousis Mencken




When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is. – Oscar Wilde



There is no fortress so strong that money cannot take it. – Cicero



No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. He had money as well. – Margaret Thatcher



Money differs from an automobile, a mistress or cancer in being equally important to those who have it and those who don’t. – John Kenneth Galbraith



Life is short and so is money. – Bertolt Brecht




Friday, October 15, 2010

Warning to Politician's - Gullibility is a Perishable Commodity

Warning – Customers Are Perishable – Store Sign



Women aren’t embarrassed when they buy men’s pajamas, but a man buying a nightgown acts as though he were dealing with a dope dealer. – Jimmy Cannon



Tipping started when gratuities were dropped in a box marked T.I.P.S. – to insure prompt service. – Bertram Troy



No customer can be worse than no customer. – Leopold Fechtner



The public doesn’t know what it wants. We offer beautiful things that we like. Anyone who disagrees with our taste is free to go elsewhere. – Tiffany and Co.



The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it. – Joyce Carol Oates



Thursday, October 14, 2010

The Parent of Prodigality

Return of the prodigal sonImage via Wikipedia
Gambling is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality. – Charles Caleb Colton




Money doesn’t always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars. – Hobart Brown



Money is the fruit of evil and often is the root of it. – Henry Fielding



Money is paper blood. – Bob Hope



Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except Heaven, and as a universal provider of everything but happiness. – Wall Street Journal



Money is the only substance which can keep a cold world from nicknaming a citizen, “Hey, you!”






Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The Sure Way to Get Nothing for Something

Ride to NowhereImage by Toronto Rob via Flickr
Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something. – Wilson Mizner




Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables, “Do not try.”



A gambler is nothing but a man who makes his living out of hope. – William Bolitho



Nine gamblers could not feed a single rooster. – Yugoslav Proverb



Gaming is the son of avarice, and the father of dispair. – French proverb



Gambling is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief. – George Washington


Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The Face that Launched a Thousand Chips

A sign at The 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, WAImage via Wikipedia

There is but one good throw upon the dice, which is to throw them away. – Paul Chatfield



If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time. – Chinese Proverb



A poker face is the face that launches a thousand chips. – anonymous



The better the gambler, the worse the man. – Publius Syrus



I’d sooner live among people who don’t cheat at cards than among people who are earnest about not cheating at cards. – Clive Staples Lewis



Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you do hold well. – Josh Billings


Monday, October 11, 2010

The Only Animl that Plays Poker

The poker tables in the Trump Taj MahalImage via Wikipedia
Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table. – Ambrose Bierce




True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table: luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home. – John Hay



There is enough energy wasted in poker to make a hundred thousand successful every year. – Arthur Brisbane



Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich – something for nothing. – George Bernard Shaw



Man is the only animal that plays poker. – Don Herold



It doesn’t say much for society, if gambling is the main method of raising money for good causes. – Bertram Troy


Sunday, October 10, 2010

I can only claim rashness born of school stressImage by St. Murse via FlickrRashness succeeds often, still more often fails. – Napoleon Bonaparte




If you leap into a well, providence is not bound to fetch you out. – Thomas Fuller



To get profit without risk, experience without danger, and reward without work, is as impossible as it is to live without being born.



The strength of Monaco is the weakness of the world. – H.A. Gibbons



Poker exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great. – Walter Matthau



God does not play dice. – Albert Einstein





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Saturday, October 9, 2010

Death on the Installment Plan

My Secret LoveImage by unbearable lightness via Flickr
Insurance is death on the installment plan. – Philip Slater




Insurance is the guarantee that, no matter how many necessities a person has to forgo all through life, death was something to which he could look forward. – Fred Allen



Progress means taking risks, for you can’t steal home and keep your foot on third base. – Herbert V. Prochnow



Being grown up means we can have our own way – at our expense. – Hal Rogers



There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction. – John F. Kennedy



We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. – Eric Hoffer




Friday, October 8, 2010

A Pound of Perhaps

Carefull what you wish forImage by Robbert van der Steeg via Flickr
Nine out of ten economic laws are economic laws only till they are found out. – Robert Lynd




Economics is a subject that does not greatly respect one’s wishes. – Nikita Khrushchev



The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self expression. – Felix Frankfurter



Whatever you have, you must either use or lose. – Henry Ford



During the first period of a man’s life the greatest danger is: not to take the risk. – Soren Keirkegaard



The worst financial risks are those that think the world owes them a living. – anonymous



A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps. – James Thurber


Thursday, October 7, 2010

Buy More Cars so Everyone Can Afford One?

GLENDALE, CA - NOVEMBER 16:  Customers shop fo...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Our nation’s economy seems to be based on the belief that we shouldn’t practice it. – Harold Coffin




One of the difficulties of economics is that it is too easy to explain after a particular event has happened, why it should have happened; and too easy to explain before it happens, why it should not happen. – M.G. Kendall



The economy may suffer if auto sales drop – but that’s the American way; we have to buy more cars than we need or we’ll never be able to afford them. – Jack Wilson



Everything now seems to be under federal control except the national debt and the budget. – Bob Goddard



There are three things not worth running for – a bus, a woman or a new economic panacea: if you wait a bit another will come along. – Derick Heathcoat Amory



There’s one way to solve all the biggest problems of life: make complacency taxable. – anonymous



Economics is all about the two biggest problems of life: how to make money and how to get along without it. – Bertram Troy




Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Going Broke Methodically

Buried machinery in barn lot in Dallas, South ...Image via WikipediaBankruptcy is a legal proceeding in which you put your money in you pants pocket and give your coat to your creditors. – Joey Adams



Remember that even though work stops, nevertheless the expenses continue to mount up. – Marcus Cato



Evolution has her own accounting system and that’s the only one that matters. – R. Buckminster Fuller



Those who work out our federal budget

have a policy – really a honey.

We shall live on our national income,

even if we must borrow the money!

Leverett Lyon



A budget is the way to go broke methodically. – anonymous



I learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than I did in all my years in college. – Hubert Humphrey



One of the great pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. – John Kenneth Galbraith


Monday, October 4, 2010

Is Chapter Eleven the result of following the Ten Commandments?

Sex Workers Rights ProtestImage by Eliya via FlickrOur accounting department is the office that has the little red box on the wall saying, “In case of emergency break glass.” And inside are two tickets to Brazil. – Robert Orben




Auditors are the people who go in after the war is lost and bayonet the wounded. – P. Rubin



If my business was legitimate, I would deduct a substantial percentage for depreciation of my body. – Xaviera Hollander



Budgeting is a system of additions and subtractions more honored in breach than in observance. – Eugene E. Brussell



I don’t know how much money I’ve got. I did ask the accountant how much it came to. I wrote it down on a bit of paper but I’ve lost the bit of paper. – John Lennon



Did you ever hear of a kid playing accountant – even if he wanted to be one. – Jackie Mason



Is Chapter Eleven the result of following the Ten Commandments? – anonymous




Saturday, October 2, 2010

The Other "N" word

Patience Is The Best Remedy For Every TroubleImage by Sam Ilić via FlickrThe trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people. – Elwyn Brooks White

Zoologist Desmond Morris once did an experiment that exposed an ape to the “profit motive.” First of all he got it to draw and paint, and found that it was doing lovely things. Then he started rewarding the ape with peanuts for its work.

“Soon it was doing any old scrawl to get the peanuts,” Morris said wryly. “I had introduced commercialism into the ape’s world, and ruined him as an artist. – Thomas Wiseman



Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise. – Peter F. Drucker



There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain. – Titus Maccius Plautus



Prefer a loss to a dishonest gain: the one brings pain at the moment, the other for all time. – chilon



Net – the biggest word in the language of business. – Herbert Casson



Few have heard of Fra Luca Parioli, the inventor of double-entry bookkeeping; but he has probably had much more influence on human life than has Dante or Michelangelo. – Herbert J. Muller