To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.
(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)
Tags: science money truth honesty morality lies writing integrity values artists greed scholars academia honour treason gain selling-out falsification veracity
Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.
Victor HugoYou ever get the feeling the world's filling up with bastards? I do. What I want to know is what happens when all the bastards run out of people to crap on? What happens when all that's left in the world is bastards? . . . The golden rule. Screw unto others before they screw unto you.
William HoffmanTags: human-nature misanthropy greed
[I]t was with a good end in mind – that of acquiring the knowledge of good and evil – that Eve allowed herself to be carried away and eat the forbidden fruit. But Adam was not moved by this desire for knowledge, but simply by greed: he ate it because he heard Eve say it tasted good.
Moderata FonteTags: knowledge motivation greed good-and-evil vice adam-and-eve original-sin
[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection.
Héloïse d'ArgenteuilTags: honesty love power women integrity prostitution virtue marriage shame sin affection poverty greed materialism honor fortune possessions wives vice matrimony dignity married-life riches payment wedlock concupiscence venality
It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.
E.A. BucchianeriTags: wisdom gold curiosity human-nature proverbs common-sense greed faults sad-but-true catholic-author avarice riches gadfly wise-sayings deadly-sins greediness greedy-people mammon
Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong."
However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts. ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart.
Tags: sexuality gender men women beauty lust temptation misogyny hypocrisy greed stereotypes wine double-standards adultery clichés drunkenness social-norms immorality
[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.
AristophanesTags: nature language selfishness character government greed administration voice politicians attributes marketplace barter human-voice demagoguery
You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.
AristophanesTags: peace greed materialism disdain vice fishing trouble politicians eels filth unrest unclean demagoguery grime slime upheaval
Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.
AristophanesTags: injustice wealth selfishness corruption poverty greed politicians self-interest public-service intrigue
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