The joys of wealth are deceptive.
Do not lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves do not break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
— Matthew 6:19–21
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
In what horrid filth lies the heart of the one whose treasure is wealth.
Having seen bright houses, large tracts of land, crowds of servants, silver vessels and large collections of clothes, people do everything they can to obtain more things, which is why the wealthiest can be the source of this evil for the less wealthy, and those, in turn, for the ones who have even less. Meanwhile, if the rich did not gather their wealth and did not engage in conspicuous consumption, they would not be teaching the less wealthy and the poor to love money. And an addiction to wealth is worse than any tyranny: it spawns worries, envy, insidiousness, hatred, slander and countless obstacles to virtue: carelessness, debauchery, covetousness, drunkenness. And this turns even the free into slaves, and even worse than slaves: slaves not of men, but of a most terrible of the passions and diseases of the soul. Such a person can bring himself to do much that is repulsive to both God and the people, fearing lest he should be extracted from this dominion. A bitter, slavish, devilish dominion! What is particularly pernicious here is that, finding ourselves in such unfortunate circumstances, we kiss our shackles and, dwelling in a dungeon filled with darkness, we have no desire to go outside into the light, and we bind ourselves to the evil and enjoy the disease. This is why we cannot free ourselves and are worse off than those who work in the mines, since we are exposed to hardships and miseries but do not enjoy the fruits. The worst thing of all is that if someone were to want to save us from this oppressive captivity, not only would we not let him, but we would get angry and indignant, and in this way we are no better than the insane, and are even much more unfortunate than them, because we do not want to part with our insanity. Were you really born a human being just to gather gold? It was not for this purpose that the Lord created you in his image: he created you to fulfill his will.
— John Chrysostom
Wealth, power, and all that which people strive so much to obtain and retain—if any of it is worth anything at all, it is only for the pleasure with which it can all be abandoned.
People care a thousand times more about becoming rich than they do about educating their minds and hearts; and yet, what lies within the human being is doubtlessly more important for his happiness than what he owns.
— Schopenhauer
After buying a fashionable piece of jewelry, you must buy ten more things in order to make everything on you match.
— Emerson
Why should a person be wealthy? Why does he need expensive horses, fine clothes, splendid rooms, the right to enter public places of amusement? All this comes from a deficit of thought.
Give this person an inner work of thought, and he will be happier than the wealthiest of people.
— Emerson
The poor person laughs more often and is more carefree than the rich.
— Seneca
For those who lead an inner spiritual life, wealth is not just unnecessary, it is also constraining: it gets in the way of true life.
