Miser Quotes

You never have to drag mercy out of Christ, as money from a miser. ~ Charles Spurgeon

A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance! ~ Charles Lamb

LXXV
So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away. ~ William Shakespeare

Joan of Arc speaks of her "contemptible estate" as a shepherd's daughter, and afterward, denying her father, calls him "Decrepit miser! base, ignoble wretch!" (Henry VI., Part 1, Act 1, Sc. 2, and Act 5, Sc. 4.) It is hard to believe that Shakespeare would have so frequently allowed his characters to express their contempt for members of the lower orders of society if he had not had some sympathy with their opinions. ~ William Shakespeare

Never was a miser a brave soul. ~ George Herbert

I would not, if I could, give up the memory of the joy I have had in books for any advantage that could be offered in other pursuits or occupations. Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer. ~ Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Watching It Happen

I laze about, deranged and unafraid
to godly kiss you, kiss the pharmacist
that whipped you, undilute, to dilate high
your animus of lime and lye.

I know of an upstairs hell.
A creamy, vascular thump
through bonus years of things that pass
and things that do not move.
Your cellular mouth. Your mess
of inattention. Now that none
of us are good looking I think
that/they are right.

Strokes of light you taped across my nipple.
Patterns staked to fake the love
we cannot feel so slick the miser
of your hand through my bad heart.
Genius, you are blond enough.
Once in a while.

And in the end, when I sweep coolly up
and will not be drawn back,
then I will tell you of it. How I can.
In writing, I am making an attempt
to depict my beautiful nose
through imagery.

I will tell you of it. Once in a while.
I will miss you. And the tape.
To be flung down,
petals from a balcony. ~ Elaine Kahn

Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor. ~ Laurence J. Peter

The Blessed Sacrament is the magnet of souls. There is a mutual attraction between Jesus and the souls of men. Mary drew Him down from heaven. Our nature attracted Him rather than the nature of angels. Our misery caused Him to stoop to our lowness. Even our sins had a sort of attraction for the abundance of His mercy and the predilection of His grace. Our repentance wins Him to us. Our love makes earth a paradise to Him; and our souls lure Him as gold lures the miser, with irresistible fascination ~ Frederick William Faber

A runner is a miser, spending the pennies of his energy with great stinginess, constantly wanting to know how much he has spent and how much longer he will be expected to pay. He wants to be broke at precisely the moment he no longer needs his coin. ~ John L. Parker Jr.

The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits, in which our whole attention and faculties are engaged, is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common soldier mounts the breach with joy; the miser deliberately starves himself to death; the mathematician sets about extracting the cube-root with a feeling of enthusiasm; and the lawyer sheds tears of admiration over "Coke upon Littleton." It is the same through life. He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he maybe wise, cannot be a very happy man. ~ William Hazlitt

Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth. ~ Gautama Buddha

Misery comes to miser; joy comes to wiser. (A Very Hot Cup of Tea, Empathy)
Juvenile invites, youth tries, adult applies, and the old man dies. (A Straw Man, Empathy)
In everyone, there lives a superhero. (The Medicine Man, Empathy)
Faith is the strongest word in any dictionary. (The Wisdom Beard, Empathy)
I've entered into your feelings; it's your turn now. (Empathy) ~ D.R. Mirror

God is not a miser with his grace. Your cup may be low in cash or clout, but it is overflowing with mercy. ~ Max Lucado

Riches, in the hands of a man that is wise and generous, are good for something, but in the hands of a sordid, sneaking, covetous miser, they are good for nothing. ~ Matthew Henry

Famous Quotes on: Honesty, Wisdom, Thomas Jefferson
Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in a foul oyster. ~ William Shakespeare

I covet honour in the same way as a miser covets gold. ~ Hans Christian Andersen

As you give yourself wholeheartedly to me, I am able to give back to you with greater abundance. Do not be a miser with your spirit. Commit to me. Spend energy on me and I will reward you with a life beyond your dreams. ~ Julia Cameron

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust. ~ Karl Kraus

And perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing at all about chess that chess for her was not simply a parlor game or a pleasant pastime, but a mysterious art equal to all the recognized arts. She had never been in close contact with such people - there was no one to compare him with except those inspired eccentrics, musicians and poets whose image one knows as clearly and as vaguely as that of a Roman Emperor, an inquisitor or a comedy miser. Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth. Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Our material possessions, like our joys, are enhanced in value by being shared. Hoarded and unimproved property can only afford satisfaction to a miser. ~ George D. Prentice

At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials. ~ Virginia Woolf

Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of miser-life are breathing. A forfeited bond twinkles in the hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle has caught a stray tint from his usurer. Features of exquisite beauty are seen and loved; but the old nature of avarice frets under the glow of devotion. Pathos staggers on the edge of farce. ~ Robert Aris Willmott

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich. ~ William Shenstone

I'll tell you something: I'll always be broke. It's a tradition in the family. My grandfather was a bankrupt. My father was a pauper. My uncle was a miser: he went crazy because he couldn't find any money to mise over. ~ James Hadley Chase

Conquer anger by love, evil by good; Conquer the miser with liberality, and the liar with truth. ~ Gautama Buddha

For the army is a school in which the miser becomes generous, and the generous prodigal; miserly soldiers are like monsters, but very rarely seen. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,
Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth,
Sweet is revenge
especially to women ~ George Gordon Byron

I felt like some crazy old miser, gloating over his piles of gold coins, only instead of coins, it was seconds that I hoarded. ~ Stephenie Meyer

The miser, poor fool, not only starves his body, but also his own soul. ~ Theodore Parker

The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape. ~ George Santayana

Miserliness has its own conveniences, otherwise nobody would be a miser. If you are not a miser, you become more insecure. If you cling to money, to things, you feel a certain security: at least there is something to ding to; you don't feel empty. Maybe you are full of rubbish; but at least something is there, you are not empty. ~ Rajneesh

Of all books printed, probably not more than half are ever read. Many are embalmed in public libraries; many go into private quarters to fill spaces; many are glanced at and put away ... scarcely opened until the fire needs kindling. The most ardent book-lovers are not always the greatest readers; indeed, the rabid bibliomaniac seldom reads at all. To him books are as ducats to the miser, something to be hoarded and not employed ... So pleasant it is to buy book; so tiresome to utilize them. ~ Flora Haines Loughead

What greater evil could you wish a miser than long life? ~ Syrus Publilius

According to the Spanish proverb, four persons are wanted to make a good salad: a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counsellor for salt and a madman to stir it all up. ~ John Gerard

Recollect that only when habits of order are formed can we advance to really interesting fields of action - and consequently accumulate grain on grain of willful choice like a very miser - never forgetting how one link dropped undone and indefinite number. - William James ~ Mason Currey

Hebe's here, May is here!
The air is fresh and sunny;
And the miser-bees are busy
Hoarding golden honey. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The miser is counting his gold pieces, unaware of Death, who holds two clear symbols: an hourglass and a pitchfork."
"Why a pitchfork and not a scythe?"
"Because Death reaps but the Devil harvests ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator ... Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or 'stage' Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke. ~ Alan King

In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake; the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself. ~ Adam Smith

And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down,
In a wild solemnity,
On a stranger sight than a sylph or elf,
On one man laughing at himself
Under the greenwood tree-

The giant laughter of Christian men
That roars through a thousand tales,
Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,
And Jack's away with his master's lass,
And the miser is banged with all his brass,
The farmer with all his flails;

Tales that tumble and tales that trick,
Yet end not all in scorning-
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas day in the morning. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Neither every rich person is noble nor miser.
Neither every poor person is humble nor wicked. ~ Salsabeel

A miser is merely a pauper with fewer friends. ~ Anthony Ryan

As we hypnotically watch the steadily diminishing reserve of sand in life's hourglass, the instincts of a miser surface. Life is now savored, sipped as with a fine 19th Century French wine. ~ Joe L. Wheeler

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave. ~ Tom Wolfe

When I caution you against becoming a miser, I do not therefore advise you to become a prodigal or a spendthrift. ~ Horace

The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Generosity brings you respect from people and those who are miser get hatred from people. ~ Abrar Ahmed Chowdhury

Miser Shen is preparing to spend the night with a goat. ~ Barry Hughart

He who cares only for himself in youth will be a very niggard in manhood, and a wretched miser in old age. ~ Josiah Johnson Hawes

In my opinion , every rich man is a miser. ~ Michel De Montaigne

She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Mutability is the badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike. Now he is for marrying; and now a mistress is preferred to a wife. Now he is ambitious and aspiring; presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he. This hour he squanders his money away; the next he turns miser. Sometimes he is frugal and serious; at other times profuse, airy, and gay. ~ Pierre Charron

A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

He misses her. He miser her, he misses her, he misses her. ...Seven miserable lonely days of missing someone he never should have been with in the first place, yet wanting her back even so. He wonders if he could overlook her lack of human sympathy and generalized air of bitterness, just so he could have the feeling of being together again. ~ Susie Steiner

To the truly benevolent mind, indeed, nothing is more satisfactory than to hear of a miser denying himself the necessaries of life a little too far and ridding us of his presence altogether. ~ James Payn

The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal. ~ Henry Home, Lord Kames

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser. ~ Robertson Davies

The happiest miser on earth is the man who saves up every friend he can make. ~ Robert E. Sherwood

To hold fealty to your own and to call it a high virtue is ludicrous. Even animals protect their own. It is a good, but it is a common good, an easy one. It's a miser who says he grows rich not for himself, but for his children. His vice is not thus magically made virtue. ~ Brent Weeks

I think probably the first time I wanted to be an artist was when I was about six or seven years old. I used to get British comics and I clearly remember seeing my first American comic: an issue of 'Action Comics', with Superman on the cover with a treasure horde in a cave, and Lois saying something like 'I don't believe Superman is a miser!' ~ Dave Gibbons

The mind is a miser," he said. "Nothing is ever thrown away, and it's amazing what you can find if you dig deep enough. ~ Barry Hughart

I try to find the books that I lost or forgot more than 30 years ago on another continent, with the hope and dedication and bitterness of those who search for their first lost books, books that if found I wouldn't read anyway, because I've already read them over and over, but that I would look at and touch just as the miser strokes the coins under which he's buried ... Books are like ghosts ~ Roberto Bolano

The miser acquires, yet fears to use his gains. ~ Horace

To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. ~ William Blake

You don't have to be a miser, just be wiser with your money. ~ Dorethia Conner Kelly

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke. ~ Brendan Francis

Go miser go, for money sell your soul. Trade wares for wares and trudge from pole to pole, So others may say when you are dead and gone. See what a vast estate he left his son. ~ John Dryden

People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end. ~ Herbert Spencer

Memory is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

A kind man who makes good use of wealth is rightly said to possess a great treasure; but the miser who hoards up his riches will have no profit. ~ Gautama Buddha

Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser! If we overdo the using of spare moments we may find an invalid at the end, while perhaps if we allowed ourselves more idle time we would conserve our nervous strength and health to more than the value the work we could accomplish by emulating at all times the little busy bee.
I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects.
I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even "set and think." She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

All Mad"

'He is mad as a hare, poor fellow,
And should be in chains,' you say,
I haven't a doubt of your statement,
But who isn't mad, I pray?
Why, the world is a great asylum,
And the people are all insane,
Gone daft with pleasure or folly,
Or crazed with passion and pain.

The infant who shrieks at a shadow,
The child with his Santa Claus faith,
The woman who worships Dame Fashion,
Each man with his notions of death,
The miser who hoards up his earnings,
The spendthrift who wastes them too soon,
The scholar grown blind in his delving,
The lover who stares at the moon.

The poet who thinks life a paean,
The cynic who thinks it a fraud,
The youth who goes seeking for pleasure,
The preacher who dares talk of God,
All priests with their creeds and their croaking,
All doubters who dare to deny,
The gay who find aught to wake laughter,
The sad who find aught worth a sigh,
Whoever is downcast or solemn,
Whoever is gleeful and gay,
Are only the dupes of delusions -
We are all of us - all of us mad. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice. ~ Eric Hoffer

Therefore, in order not to have to rob his subjects, to be able to defend himself, not to become poor and contemptible, and not to be forced to become rapacious, a prince must consider it of little importance if he incurs the reputation of being a miser, for this is one of the vices that permits him to rule. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Giving with glad and generous hearts has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon greed. ~ Richard J. Foster

The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty. ~ Publilius Syrus

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying. ~ Gertrude Stein

Are you ready to cut off your head and place your foot on it? If so, come; Love awaits you! Love is not grown in a garden, nor sold in the marketplace; whether you are a king or a servant, the price is your head, and nothing less. Yes, the cost of the elixir of love is your head! Do you hesitate? 0 miser, It is cheap at that price! ~ Al-Ghazali

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. ~ Herman Melville

The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable. ~ Theodore Parker

[On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches. ~ Ouida

The spendthrift robs his heirs the miser robs himself. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty. ~ Andre Gide

You may choose to live like a miser," Leo said, "but I'll be damned if I have to. You're incapable of enjoying the moment because you're always intent on tomorrow. Well, for some people, tomorrow never comes."
Her temper flared. "Someone has to think of tomorrow, you selfish spendthrift!"
"Coming from an overbearing shrew - "
Win stepped between them, resting a gentle hand on Amelia's shoulder. "Hush, both of you. It serves no purpose to make yourselves cross just before we are to leave." She gave Amelia a sweet quirk of a smile that no one on earth could have resisted. "Don't frown like that, dear. What if your face stayed that way?"
"With prolonged exposure to Leo," Amelia replied, "it undoubtedly would. ~ Lisa Kleypas

That's good. Don't be a miser about love. Be a spendthrift. The more you give, the more you will have. Love is something that you earn by giving it. If you hoard it, it dies and leaves black holes in your being. If you give it, it flowers and in your being you feel lotuses flowering. ~ Osho

I am a miser of my memories of you
And will not spend them. ~ Witter Bynner

Habit hath so vast a prevalence over the human mind that there is scarce anything too strange or too strong to be asserted of it. The story of the miser who, from long accustoming to cheat others, came at last to cheat himself, and with great delight and triumph picked his own pocket of a guinea to convey to his hoard, is not impossible or improbable. ~ Henry Fielding

I'm a rich man, but I don't want to be a miser. ~ Chen Guangbiao

I was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but I was certainly not a physical impossibility ~ H.G.Wells

Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy; apathy cannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions. The miser, who thinks himself respectable, merely because he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good, for the actual accomplishment of it, is not more blamable than the man of sentiment, without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, which excludes that to the calls of any practical virtue, that they turn from the distressed, and, because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is that humanity, which can be contented to pity, where it might assuage!" St. ~ Eliza Parsons

After all, people judge one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees other enticed by money, the lustful who see others obsessed by desire. ~ Irene Nemirovsky

Joy may be a miser, But Sorrow's purse is free. ~ Richard Henry Stoddard

The ambitious sacrifices all to what he terms honor, as the miser all to money. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat. Unhappy is he whose fame makes his misfortunes famous. Lucius Accius, Telephus ~ Robert Galbraith

The time arrives. 'It is a waltz, I think,' Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. 'Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey - ' But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don't know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it her, and say: 'I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.' 'Indeed! What is that?' returns Miss Larkins. 'A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.' 'You're a bold boy,' says Miss Larkins. 'There. ~ Charles Dickens

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Tis strange the miser should his cares employTo gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy;Is it less strange the prodigal should wasteHis wealth to purchase what he ne'er can taste? ~ Alexander Pope