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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Miser

Avarice is the miser’s dream.

Hazlitt.

A mere madness, to live like a wretch, and die rich.

Burton.

The miser robs himself.

Lavater.

O cursed hunger of pernicious gold!

Dryden.

Groan under gold, yet weep for want of bread.

Young.

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

Shenstone.

He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.

Bible.

Misers mistake gold for their good; whereas it is only the means of obtaining it.

La Rochefoucauld.

History tells us of illustrious villains, but there never was an illustrious miser.

St. Evremond.

The life of a miser is a play of which we applaud only the closing scene.

Sanial-Dubay.

Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.

Shenstone.

  • Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets;
  • But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.
  • Shakespeare.

    The miser, poor fool, not only starves his body, but also his own soul.

    Theodore Parker.

    The cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    Of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested; it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

    Helvetius.

  • Famine is in thy cheeks,
  • Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
  • Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back;
  • The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.
  • Shakespeare.

    A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm’s length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance!

    Lamb.

    A thorough miser must possess considerable strength of character to bear the self-denial imposed by his penuriousness. Equal sacrifices, endured voluntarily in a better cause, would make a saint or a martyr.

    W. B. Clulow.

    Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.

    Bulwer-Lytton.