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Favorite Trivia – WEALTH & GREED & POWER & SUCCESS
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“Wealth has increased and wealth’s fierce maddening lust, Juvenal |
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“Time treats us all the same. No matter how much wealth or influence or power we have, the day is the same length for all.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Long Life |
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“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Albert Einstein |
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“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Roger Staubach |
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“The most important investment decision any person can make is to invest in himself.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Good Luck |
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“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence—and then success is sure.” Mark Twain |
| “I went out yesterday to dine at Mr. Blatchford’s, at Hell Gate… Mr. [John Jacob] Astor, one of our dinner companions. . . presented a painful example of the insufficiency of wealth to prolong the life of man. This old gentleman with his fifteen millions of dollars. . . His life has been spent in amassing money and he loves it as much as ever. He sat at the dinner table with his head down upon his breast, saying very little, and in a voice almost unintelligible (the saliva dropping from his mouth,) and a servant behind him to guide the victuals which he was eating, and to watch him as an infant is watched. His mind is good, his observation acute, and he seems to know everything that is going on. But the machinery is all broken up, and there are some people, no doubt, who think he has lived long enough. [October 9, 1844]
[FYI, His great grandson John Jacob Astor IV died in the sinking of the Titanic, 1912] Diary of Philip Hone, 1828-1851 |
| success: “There is only one—to be able to spend your life in your own way.” – Christopher Morley
Leonard Louis Levinson – Webster’s Unafraid Dictionary: 5,000 Defiant Definitive Put-Downs |
| “Almost anything is possible, but remember the almost.”
David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Tranquillity |
| “I grieve no longer that ungodly men Are rais’d to Fortune’s highest pinnacle; They’re lifted high, on purpose, that they may Be hurled with crash more awful to the ground.” Claudianus, In Rufinium, trans., W. Francis H. King |
| “‘Money can do horrible things to ignorant people,’ she [Diana Vreeland] once observed. ‘They want more, the greed starts to show, and then they only want to be with other rich people to find out how to get richer.'” Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins – The Power of Style |
| “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
Stephen Covey |
| “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
Confucius |
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“I am not so impressed with what money procures for people as what it saves them from.” Edward Noyes Westscott – David Harum |
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“A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.” Anonymous |
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“Those who want to succeed will surely find a way, and those who don’t will find an excuse.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Long Life |
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“He [George Clooney] didn’t invest his windfall [from selling a third of his share of Casamigos to Diageo for some $1 billion] or any of the up to $100 million he might wind up making as a spokesperson for Nespresso. “‘It’s in a bank. I make 1 percent or less on the money. To me, the stock market is like Vegas without the glass of tequila sitting next to you. It’s none of the fun and all of the risks.'” “The Sexiest Man Still Alive” – Joel Stein (AARP, February/March 2021) |
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“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” Vivian Greene |
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“Wealth is not his who has it but his who enjoys it.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Enlightenment |
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“He used to say, ‘Boys, whenever you git holt of a ten-dollar note you want to git it into ye or onto ye jest’s quick’s you kin. We’re here to-day an’ gone tom-morrer,’ he’d say, ‘an’ the’ ain’t no pocket in a shroud,’… “‘I’m inclined to think,’ he remarked with an air of having given the matter consideration, ‘that after Adam an’ Eve got bounced out of the gard’n they kicked themselves as much as anythin’ fer not havin’ cleaned up the hull tree while they was about it.'” Edward Noyes Westscott – David Harum |
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“We are told that Roman boys would solder a coin to the pavement and then ridicule those who tried to pick it up.” [Epistles, I. XVI. Notes]
Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. by H. Ruston Fairclough |
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“The only way to beat the roulette table is to knock out the croupier and steal the money.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Good Luck |
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“I can never understand avarice in an old man. For what can be more absurd than to add more and more to the provision for our journey as you draw nearer to its end.” [De Senectute., I, 18.] Cicero |
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“I cannot collaborate with Hugo in his business life—I do not believe in it. I did not believe in the bank that demanded not only all his time, but mine too. I did not believe in the National City Bank who pressured its employees into buying National City Bank stocks with money borrowed from the bank, and then when the stock crashed, forced its employees to ‘pay back’ the loan, which was beyond their income, because it looked bad on the books, and this forced Hugo to seek help from his mother to whom we paid back a huge debt over a twenty year period! I do not believe in any of his business ventures or the American illusion of wealth he pursued. I do not believe Hugo has a flair for this.” [New York, May 19, 1953] Trapeze: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947-1955 – edited by Paul Herron |
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“For all things—worth, repute, honour, things divine and human—are slaves to the beauty of wealth.” [Satires, II, III.]
Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. by H. Ruston Fairclough |
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“If stomach, lungs, and feet are all in health, the wealth of kings can give you nothing more.” [Epistles, XII.]
Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. by H. Ruston Fairclough |
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“The way up and the way down are one and the same.” Heraclitus |
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“It seems to me that when you take a man’s money away he’s fit for nothing from that moment.” “No, not necessarily. If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, ‘I’m a free man in here‘”—he tapped his forehead—”and you’re all right.” George Orwell – Down and Out in Paris and London |
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“The world is a casino and none shall know until the end of their days here exactly what they have lost or won.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Good Luck |
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“If only our impulse to create could match our impulse to possess.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Tranquility |