Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it.

A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.

The miser is as much in want of what he has as of what he has not.

A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.

Avarice fills its purse at the expense of its belly.

The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty.

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

John D. Rockefeller apparently became more of a tightwad the richer he got. I don't know if it is true, but one story I read was about one of his sons having to wear his older sister's clothes in order to save money.

True it is that covetousness is rich, modesty starves.

The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable.

And plenty makes us poor.

The miser acquires, yet fears to use his gains.

The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide.

CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious persons wish to obtain.

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.

The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy them, but to have them; and starves himself in the midst of plenty, and most unnaturally cheats and robs himself of that which is his own; and makes a hard shift, to be as poor and miserable with a great estate, as any man can be without it.

[Meanness] is more ingrained in man's nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.

Self-preservation has a tendency to lead to poverty.

The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

Avarice is always poor.

The character of covetousness, is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.

It should cause no surprise that anyone so lazy as myself should be economical to the point of miserliness with everything he writes.

The ruling Passion of the Dutchman is Avarice. Of literature they know nothing, and they are seldom seen with a book.

The ass loaded with gold still eats thistles.