Greed

“ Now, when I was about to get the supreme rottenness, the supreme filth, the mixture of such foul products brewing poison, when the greed was beginning to irritate, in its folly hastening to seize whatever came to hand, like an old woman caught in a conflagration, here you come with your cries of Hispanism, with chants of confidence in the government, in what cannot come to pass, here you have a body palpitating with heat and life, young, pure, vigorous, throbbing with blood, with enthusiasm, suddenly come forth to offer itself again as fresh food! ”

“ Because you did not do as I told you, you must now taste the bitterness of a son's death, the fruit of the tree of your own wickedness. Yes, this is what happens to those blinded by greed. For the proverb says:
Indulge in no excessive greed
(A little helps in time of need) —
A greedy fellow in the world
Found on his head a wheel that whirled. ”

“ The twentieth century, in its latter half, shall surely see the deluge-tempest burst upon the social order,—to clear upon a world as deep in ruin as that greed-philosophy has long plunged it into guilt. ”

“ It is this: that greed, the infernal lust of money that has laid hold upon our day and generation, can take so fine a thing as that poor boy’s gratitude, transform it into criminality, and make him pay the price with his life. ”

“ For greed has here a very beautiful, fine cover for its shame, which is called provision for the body and natural need, under cover of which it accumulates wealth beyond all limits and is never satisfied ”

“ Bound down by the greed of gain! So that the nobler powers of mind and body, and soul, are degraded and cramped in them—men and women slaves of superstition, slaves of prodigies and foolish fancies wrought into their very nature. ”

“ Let us live happily, then, free from greed among the greedy! Among men who are greedy let us dwell free from greed!54
The sun is bright by day, the moon shines by night, the warrior is bright in his armor, thinkers are bright in their meditation ”

“ Think then what will be that abiding torment, of remembering a life spent for nought; wealth thrown away; means of doing good despised; charity suffered to languish; a thousand claims of God's own asserting, the least of which if acknowledged might by His grace have made thee rich for ever, put by and scorned; thine own evil example of selfishness and greed followed, and bettered, as the world goes on. ”

“ Your diseases and your evil thoughts are crouching in the woods and on the greenswards. Everywhere a stink of misery is following you like that of rotting waters.” That’s what it is telling us. “Your greed and your envy are a pair of sisters who have fought each other since they were born”—that’s what it says. ”

“ I suppose in my greed I was loitering about to steal people's hearts in secret."
The Devotee said: "Now you see for yourself how little their hearts are worth. They are full of poison, and this will cure you of your greed."
"When a man," I answered, "has greed in his heart, he is always on the verge of being beaten. ”

“ It is therefore clear that monetary greed found no place in my father's temperament, but only the dread which every prudent husband and father must feel when confronted with the prospect, in two years' time and at the age of forty-six, of recommencing the arduous battle of life. ”

“ The twentieth century has already given thousands of illustrations of the same apostasy. As for the wide statement that “the love of money is the root of all evil,” we have but to review these pages to find the commentary. Every item in the catalogue of crimes finds a partner in greed. Intemperance, lust, war, thieving, murder, betrayal, persecution, untruthfulness—all these grow from the root of greed. ”

“ He shook his head.
"It's greed, you know," the woman said confidentially. The other women of the tribunal nodded in agreement. "Greed's the downfall of all men. How many wars do you have to lose before you realize that?" ”

“ Joyless emblem of the greed Of millions, robber of the best Which earth can give, the vulgar creed Has seared upon the night its flaming ruthless screed. ”

“ But greed to-day means something quite otherwise. When I speak of greed as the main motive of authorship I use the word, not with any old-fashioned dictionary meaning, but in an up-to-date, clear-sighted, clarion, socialist sense. You speak to-day—those of you who are in the movement—of the greed of the capitalist, the greed of the employer. In this way I speak of the greed of the author. The greed of anyone to-day is the greed which urges him to endeavour to enrich himself and provide for himself and his family by using his brains in producing things. ”

“ And when we consider the world in its doings, how greed controls all business, we would not only find enough to do, if we would make an honorable living before God, but also be overcome with dread and fear for this perilous, miserable life, which is so exceedingly overburdened, entangled and taken captive with cares of this temporal life and dishonest seeking of gain. ”

“ They demonstrate, as with the physical accuracy of the dissector’s scalpel, the same selfishnesses and superstitions and weaknesses and impulses of lust and cowardice and greed, multiplying to-day as yesterday. ”

“ All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. ”

“ Somewhat late you have opened your eyes, for between you and me together we might have executed marvelous plans, I above in the higher circles spreading death amid perfume and gold, brutalizing the vicious and corrupting or paralyzing the few good, and you below among the people, among the young men, stirring them to life amid blood and tears. ”

“ Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes; that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual. ”

“ "Do you know how I would call the nature of the present economic conditions? I would call it cannibalistic. That's what it is! They are nourishing their greed on the quivering flesh and the warm blood of the people—nothing else." ”

“ Sense gone, work useless, thoughts and counsels vain.
501.
If men by tears could heal their several ills,
And by their weeping bring the dead to life,
Then gold would be of far less price than tears.
512.
Greedy of gain is every barbarous tribe. ”

“ The miserable persecuted wretch, placed between the alternative of paying money down or of becoming socially impossible, losing a valued position, seeing dishonour bursting upon himself and family, pays, and still the more he pays, the greedier becomes the vampire who sucks his life-blood, until at last there lies nothing else before him except total financial ruin or disgrace. ”

“ At first they only hint it, very gently and tenderly, but when he still insists that he has not sinned in any way which should bring such suffering, they become more harsh and {180} plainly charge him with being greedy of gain and cruel to the poor. ”

“ II. That not they only, but all other sinners like them, should perish under a divine woe. 1. Those that are covetous, are greedy of wealth and honours,
ver. 9, 11. 2. Those that are injurious and oppressive, and raise estates by wrong and rapine, ver. 12-14. 3. Those that promote drunkenness that they may expose their neighbours to shame, ver. 15-17. 4. Those that worship idols, ver. 18-20.
verses 1-4 Waiting upon God ”

“ The insulted hero rolls his wrathful eyes And “Why so turbulent of soul? (he cries;) Can these lean shrivell’d limbs, unnerved with age, These poor but honest rags, enkindle rage? In crowds, we wear the badge of hungry fate: And beg, degraded from superior state! Constrain’d a rent-charge on the rich I live; Reduced to crave the good I once could give: A palace, wealth, and slaves, I late possess’d, And all that makes the great be call’d the bless’d: My gate, an emblem of my open soul, Embraced the poor, and dealt a bounteous dole. Scorn not the sad reverse, injurious maid! ”

“ And since, when I returned to the fortress, not one of my followers accompanied me (for I was penniless) I began to ponder deeply.
"A curse, a curse on a life of poverty! There is sound sense in the verse:
Even relatives are sure
Scornfully to treat the poor;
Pride is docked, and virtue's moon
Loses luster, waning soon;
Friends that were, disgusted fly;
Sorrows breed and multiply;
Comes the imputation then
Of the sins of other men.
When man is crushed by poverty
And stricken down by fate,
His best of friends become his foes,
And tried affection, hate. ”

“ Good God! the misery, and wretchedness, and grinding poverty, deadening to the heart, which exist in large cities, within ken of opulence, of luxury and of splendor! O! could the voice of these wretched throngs be heard, in its collected wailing, what a cry of despairful agony would go up to the throne of the Everlasting! Dead souls in living sepulchres, stalking their gloomy round of poverty, neglect and wo—uneducated, ungodly, famine-stricken—what hope is there for them in this world, and, word of horror, what in the next! ”

“ The poor have damned the rich and the rich the poor. The imprisoned imagined a hell for their gaolers; the weak built this place for the strong; the arrogant for their rivals; the vanquished for their victors; the priest for the thinker, religion for reason, superstition for science.
⁠All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word -- Hell.
⁠For the nourishment of this dogma cruelty was soil, ignorance was rain, and fear was light. ”

“ All honest men, pray for me, and pray well,
Lest true men’s curses send the false to hell.
II. ON A PROFITEER.
I FATTENED on the blood and tears
Of these long laborious years;
Out of loss came forth my gain,
Watered by another’s pain:
Who shall bid me rise again?
Pray for me, all poor men, and pray right well,
Lest poor men’s curses bring the rich to hell. ”

“ ROMEO.
Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back.
The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich ”

“ Poor, stricken, patient ones! not theirs the blame:
Man’s sin, man’s lust of power, wrought evil here,
As ever since the first dire trouble came
That cursed the world.—They justly claim our aid,
Man is man’s debtor: let this debt be paid. ”

“ How much this religious faculty has run to waste—rending its banks, pouring otev the dam, or turning the priest's loud clattering mill of vanity, not grinding corn for the toilsome, hungry world. Man sits on the bank, in mortars pounding his poor bread with many a groan, mourning over political oppression, the lies of great and the vanity of little men, over war and want, slavery, drunkenness, and many a vice, while the priest turns to private account this river of God, which is full of water! ”

“ Was ever man the better for having coffers full of gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is incurred to fill them? Look into the history of any civilised nations; analyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the lives and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this; pride, and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. ”

“ Words, words are empty,—were life built on words, How rich the poor would grow, the weak be strong, The hateful loving, and the scornful weak, The king would be a peasant, and the poor A king in his own right; the murderer, red From his foul guilt, would pass to God’s own breast, And all damned things, long damned of earth’s consent, And some dread law, much older far than we, Would blossom righteous under heaven’s face. ”

“ Therefore, when I find in the tenth chapter of Proverbs this: 'The rich man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their poverty,' I shake hands with the author, and travel with him for this trip at least. The prophet does not say that their destruction is ignorance, or vice, or sin, or any of the ordinary blossoms of poverty which it is the fashion to refer to as its root. He tells us the truth—the destruction of the poor is their poverty. ”

“ I would not take what is not mine, for hoards of wealth untold,—
Far better grasp the red-hot steel, than touch another’s gold;
The love of money, God hath said, of evil is the root,
And if dishonesty thence spring, destruction is the fruit. ”

“ Not only sobs and sighs, but moaning and beating of little fists together, and outcries of soul-felt agony stifled against the bedside, and temples pressed into knitted palms, because of one who "sought not to be acquainted," but offered money—money!—in pity to a poor—shame on her for saying that!—a poor nigresse. ”

“ Those that were reduced to this distress were such as had had abundance of silver and gold, money, and plate, and jewels, and other valuable goods, from which they promised themselves a great deal of advantage in times of public trouble. They thought their wealth would be their strong city, that with it they could bribe enemies and buy friends, that it would be the ransom of their lives, that they could never want bread as long as they had money, and that money would answer all things ”

“ Hear the very heathen cry "semper avarus eget"—"the miser ever needs"; or "Avarum irritat non satiat pecunia"—"the wealth of the miser satisfies not, but irritates." But more weighty and far-reaching is the word of revelation going far beyond the negation of the king. "They that desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition, for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." ”