Cupidity Quotes

“Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“In order to make them overlook our greed, or to make us seem less greedy than we are, we sometimes remind some people that, if and when we catch it, the wealth that we are relentlessly chasing would enable us to help a lot of poor people.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Therefore I conclude that the difficulty concerns integrity. People whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an appalling obsession with personal integrity.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Money can be a curse: all evil comes from it, as well as all good. Don't squander it, don't cultivate extravagant tastes.”
― Ivan Goncharov, The Same Old Story

“Landowners were indeed guilty of an astonishingly myopic cupidity, as exposed by the Reverend John Macdonald of Alvie in 1835. During the war, he pointed out, local rents had 'more than tripled', but 'the price of cattle and sheep was so high, that the tenants were enabled the bear these heavy burdens'. Twenty years on, however, 'it is entirely out of their power to pay the rents then imposed upon them. Since the peace, the price of cattle has been so much reduced, that sometimes three can scarcely be sold at the price formerly received for one; while the rent continue still the same.' Arrears, he predicted, would soar and tenants go bankrupt until landowners eventually fell victim to their own policies.”
― David Taylor, 'The People Are Not There': The Transformation of Badenoch 1800 - 1863

“And I saw that all the toil and all achievement spring from one person's envy of another.”
― ECCLESIASTES, Ecclesiastes, or The Preacher