Joseph Addison Quotes

We must endure the luxury and avarice of sovereigns, as we endure the barrenness of a soil, storms, and other inconveniences of nature. There will be vices as long as there are men; but these are not continual, and are recompensed by the intermixture of better qualities

Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

Money is... I'm very conscious of it because I have it. It's powerful, man. It can change you ever so slightly, ever so slowly, and all of a sudden you're addicted to a million-dollar lifestyle and you've got no choice but to make a bad movie.

Sometimes when you've got too much money you lose your imagination.

Rome had Senators too, that's why it declined.

Wealth conquered Rome after Rome had conquered the world.

I have always resented the way the other sultans and emirs of my time have become too caught up in glory, pride and wealth

Gold is power Aurum est Potestas

In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...and sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation.

Monarchy is a species of government fit only for a people too much corrupted by luxury, avarice, and a passion for pleasure, to have any love for their country, and whose vices the fear of punishment alone is able to restrain.

Fear first made gods in the world.

The festival of Kalends [the new year] is celebrated everywhere as far as the limits of the Roman Empire extended….Everywhere may be seen carousels and well-laden tables. Luxurious abundance is found in the houses of the rich. But also in the houses of the poor better food than usual is put upon the table. The impulse to spend seizes everyone …. People are not only generous towards themselves but also towards their fellow men. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides…. The Kalends festival banishes all that is connected with toil and allows men to give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment.

Pompeii was an incredibly corrupt city. Pompeii was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.

I know not why any one but a school boy in his declamation would whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they were rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves and of one another.

In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury.

When the loo paper gets thicker and the writing paper thinner, it's always a bad sign, at home.

Wine and other luxuries have a tendency to enervate the mind and make men less brave in battle.

Destitution and excessive luxury develop apparently the same ideals, the same marauding attitude towards mankind, the intensity of struggle for material goods, -- surely showing how perfect is the meeting of extremes.

There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.

The rich are always enamored of the ancient.

I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices . . . The point is not to be debilitated by your pleasures. Maybe I have lucky genes or something but I've never been truly addicted to anything, except pleasure in general.

Luxury and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices

We've been in a recession, by any common sense definition, because if you look at the American public, they've got 20 billion - 20 trillion, I should say, worth of residential homes.

It's like in most parts of America, where there was industry and there is no longer; there is cynicism mixed with sarcasm and some optimism. That's how my background influenced my comedy.