Avarice is insatiable, and is always pushing on for more.

To be longing for this thing to-day and for that thing to-morrow; to change likings for loathings, and to stand wishing and hankering at a venture--how is it possible for any man to be at rest in this fluctuant, wandering humor and opinion?

Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions.

Money does all things,--for it gives and it takes away; it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so forward, mutatis mutandis, to the end of the chapter.

Unruly ambition is deaf, not only to the advice of friends, but to the counsels and monitions of reason itself.

By one delay after another they spin out their whole lives, till there's no more future left for them.

Humor is the offspring of man; it comes forth like Minerva, fully armed from the brain.