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A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.

— David Hume Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

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Poverty

More quotes by David Hume

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.

The History of England (1754)

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies.

Solomon

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

Leo Tolstoy

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Hume (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.