c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Hey. What did you do to your - I mean, you look different." My cheeks go immediately hot. Not that your average onlooker can tell, given all the makeup I'm wearing. "Frankie and I were just messing around this morning." "Oh," he says, tying the paper from his straw into little knots. "It looks nice, I mean. I just can't see you, that's all." I make a mental note to ditch the makeup tomorrow. Then I get mad at myself for letting some boy that I just met dictate what I do with my own face. Then I get mad at myself for getting mad at myself and remember that I, too, prefer the natural look.
— Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer
I closed my eyes under the fluroescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle.
— Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer
Lena studied the faces of the girls on the sidelines. She could tell that Kostos owned the lust of what few local teenage girls there were in Oia, but instead he chose to dance with all the grandmothers, all the women who had raised him, who had poured into him the love they couldn't spend on their own absent children and grandchildren.
— Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Something happened during Matt's talk. When I sat down I was one person, but by the time he was done, I was someone else. Someone changed. Someone new. Someone I didn't know. My arms were covered in gooseflesh. My stomach was doing this buoyant, top-of-the-roller-coaster thing. Suddenly I wanted to be pretty. I wanted guys to think I was pretty. In particular, I wanted this guy to think I was pretty...
— Susan Auten
Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think... It is wounding work, this breaking of the hearts, but without wounding there is no saving... Where there is grafting there will always be a cutting, the graft must be let in with a wound; to stick it onto the outside or to tie it on with a string would be of no use. Heart must be set to heart and back to back or there will be no sap from root to branch. And this, I say, must be done by a wound, by a cut.
— John Bunyan
When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every 10 years because I am a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric. I see in their eyes the trueness of the story.
— Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
So, as we have our tea, I propose not only to operate on your heart so as to change your will, but also on your eyes so as to change your outlook. But wait a minute. No, I do not propose to operate at all. I myself cannot do anything of the sort. I am just mildly suggesting that you are perhaps dead, and perhaps blind, leaving you to think the matter over for yourself. If an operation is to be performed it must be performed by God Himself.
— Cornelius Van Til
But an attentive researcher--like you--might be able to see something that all the experts can't see. If she asks the right questions.
— Katherine Howe, Conversion
The basic dynamics of conversion are summed up for me in the words LEAVE-ARRIVE, END-BEGIN, SHED-EMERGE. These are the tensions of conversion and spiritual awakening.
— Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved
Watch out for the chameleons! Mind your mind! Watch your words! Sometimes, some people will appear very friendly to have awesome conversations with you, and that is not as if they like you or your conversation; they only want to weigh your thoughts through your words! Be watchful!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Terror doesn't change people from gay to straight. It just hurts innocent people.
— DaShanne Stokes
Sometimes, late at night, the words are only whispers– Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. The quiet is kindness and gratitude and calm–Have mercy on me, a sinner. And I fall asleep like that, the words of the Jesus Prayer melting from English to Greek– Kyrie Iesou Christe. Floating around me– Yie tou Theou. Swimming apart from me– Eleison me.
— Angela Doll Carlson, Nearly Orthodox: On being a modern woman in an ancient tradition
I now understand that I would never have been able to become a plausible critic of the absurdities of modern consciousness until I myself had experienced them. I did not become an orthodox believer or theologian until after I tried out most of the errors long rejected by Christianity. If my first forty years were spent hungering for meaning in life, the last forty have been spent in being fed. If the first forty were prodigal, the last forty have been a homecoming.
— Thomas C. Oden, A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir
His [brother in law Jim Hampson] appointment to the Episcopal parish in Wenham, near Gordon College brought them in close touch with leading evangelical faculty members in their pews and church leadership, including Elizabeth Elliot and Addison Leitch. They were instrumental in drawing Jim and and Sarah into the cutting edge of evangelical intellectual leadership, with friendships with Tom Howard and J.I. Packer. My ongoing relationship with Jim Packer, FitzSimons Allison and many other brilliant Anglican evangelicals would not have happened without Jim Hampson. His early influence on me in my transition from modern to classic Christian teaching was immense. While I was trying to demythologize Scripture, he was taking its plain meaning seriously. His strong preaching led him to become one of the founding sponsors and supporters of Trinity School of Ministry in Abridge, Pennsylvania...
— Thomas C. Oden, A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir
As they seek authenticity, Emerging Evangelicals seek freedom - from loneliness, convention, unwanted authority, dominant paradigms, the prevailing social climate, and impersonal bureaucracies. Ironically, in this sense, their preferred narrative and their desired subjectivity are just as modern as what they seek to distance themselves from: the conservative Christian subculture, including its born-again narrative of awakening and transformation.
— James S. Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire for Authenticity
Conversion was turning out to be quite far from the greeting-card moment promised by televangelists, when Jesus steps into your life, personally saves you, and becomes your lucky charm forever. Instead, it was socially and politically awkward, as well as profoundly confusing. I wasn't struck with any sudden conviction that I now understood the "truth." If anything, I was just crabbier, lonelier, and more destabilized.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
It's not conversion 'therapy
— ' it's conversion brainwashing.
Imitation finds no place at all in morality, and examples serve only for encouragement, that is, they put beyond doubt the feasibility of what the law commands, they make visible that which the practical rule expresses more generally, but they can never authorize us to set aside the true original which lies in reason, and to guide ourselves by examples.
— Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
Of course, there were innumerable conversions during these years, as Christianity became the religion of Western Europe and Christendom took its characteristic shape. Many of these were undramatic – serfs responding to the importunity of their lords – or group events, as in the conversion of Clovis’s troops. But for many others there was no longer need of conversion. The contours of Christian experience had shifted. Whereas up to the time of Augustine there had been four stages of initiation and incorporation into the church, there were no typically two. The first stage was brief and obligatory – baptism in the days or months after birth. The second stage would happen later and would take longer – if it took place at all – when confirmation happened and when parents instructed their children and godparents instructed their godchildren in the beliefs and behavior of the Christian church. Indeed, at this time of the rapid spread of Christianity into new territories, it was vitally necessary that the baptizands be taught well. The heroic and valorous values of the folk, the glorious narratives of warriors, the adulation of wealth and strength – all of these were as firmly in place in seventh-century Gaul as the pagan values and narratives had been in third-century Rome. If Christianity were to be a religion of revelation that could challenge the commonplaces of Gallic society, if new habits were to be taught and new role models were to be adopted, there would have to be some form of postbaptismal pastoral follow-up.
— Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom
Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can’t do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us call “myself.
— N.T. Wright
At every turn, while he was investigating the background for his study of Thomas Nashe, he would encounter the Church — what Chesterton called (another book title) The Thing. It was everywhere. At one point, he later told me (and he was never very specific just when that point occurred), he decided that the thing had to be sorted out or he couldn't rest. Either it ws true, or it wasn't. Either the entire matter was true, all of it, exactly as the Church claimed, or it was the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on a gullible mankind. With that choice clearly delineated, he set out to find which was the case. What came next was not more study, but testing.The matter had to be tested — on its own terms: that is, by prayer. He told me that the principal prayer that he used was not some long or complex formula, but simply, "Lord, please, send me a sign." He reported that, almost immediately, not one but a deluge of signs arrived. And they continued to arrive unabated for a long time. As to just what the signs consisted in and what happened next, well, some things must remain private. The reader may deduce the rest from the fact of his conversion. ...-- Eric McLuhan, introduction
— Marshall McLuhan, The Medium and the Light
I changed. I have been turning into a different person since that half-minute.
— Joy Davidman
I never came into the church as a person who was being taught. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying they need truths; that’s all. You don’t come into the Church by ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell when people leave the Church: they have quit praying.Actively relating to the Church's prayer and sacraments is not done through ideas. Any Catholic today who has an intellectual disagreement with the Church has an illusion. You cannot have an intellectual disagreement with the Church: that's meaningless. The Church is not an intellectual institution. It is a superhuman institution.
— Marshall McLuhan, The Medium and the Light
Some websites are completely optimized for simple conversion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.
— Erika Hall, Just Enough Research
The real difference between Francis and Dominic, which is no discredit to either of them, is that Dominic did happen to be confronted with a huge campaign for the conversion of heretics, while Francis had only the more subtle task of the conversion of human beings.
— G.K. Chesterton
Some websites are completely optimized for simple conver- sion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.
— Erika Hall, Just Enough Research
When I am away from Liturgy for too long, I find I burn for it now, for the steadiness of the calendar, the words" that ring out in repetition, the heavy scented air. When I return each week, I am coming home again. Liturgy is written into my flesh, sinking into my skin and my spirit.
— Angela Doll Carlson, Nearly Orthodox: On being a modern woman in an ancient tradition
When a poor soul is somewhat awakened by the terrors of the Lord, then the poor creature, being born under the covenant of works, flies directly to a covenant of works again. And as Adam and Eve hid themselves… and sewed fig leaves… so the poor sinner, when awakened, flies to his duties and to his performances, to hide himself from God, and goes to patch up a righteousness of his own. Says he, I will be mighty good now–I will reform–I will do all I can; and then certainly Jesus Christ will have mercy on me.
— George Whitefield, The Method of Grace. a Sermon, Preached on Sabbath Morning, September 13th, 1741. in the High-Church-Yard of Glasgow, ... by ... George Whitefield
I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.
— Richard Strauss
God may not give that instant dollar bill your seeking, but it's in the little change He brings, that will add to a dollar.
— Anthony Liccione
The most convincing proof of the conversion of heat into living force [vis viva] has been derived from my experiments with the electro-magnetic engine, a machine composed of magnets and bars of iron set in motion by an electrical battery. I have proved by actual experiment that, in exact proportion to the force with which this machine works, heat is abstracted from the electrical battery. You see, therefore, that living force may be converted into heat, and that heat may be converted into living force, or its equivalent attraction through space.
— James Prescott Joule, The Scientific Papers of James Prescott Joule - Volume 1
I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reactions at a surface.
— Walter Houser Brattain
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.The Brothers KaramazovMitya (Dmitri) to Aloysha who visits him in prison, Book XI - Ivan, Chapter 4 - A Hymn and a Secret.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
God demands a conversion of the mind and heart as the basis of peace and security (cf. Is 26:3), not the superstitious veneration of a stone building or a traditionally sacred site
— R.K. Harrison
In the secret recesses of man's nature the grace is given disposing and enabling him to yield. Though the will must at last act from its own resources and deliberate impulse, it is influenced through the feeling and the understanding in such a manner as to give it strength. It is utterly hopeless to penetrate this mystery: it is the secret between God's Spirit and man's agency. There is a Divine operation which works the desire and acts in such a manner as not to interfere with the natural freedom of the will. The man determines himself, through Divine grace, to salvation: never so free as when swayed by grace.
— William Burton Pope
The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
— Socrates
Manifest plainness,Embrace simplicity,Reduce selfishness,Have few desires.
— Lao Tzu
I want an Oompa-Loompa!' screamed Veruca.
— Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Why can a Grisha possess but one amplifier? I will answer this question instead: What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.
— Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone
What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?Or sells eternity to get a toy?For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?
— William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.
— Janwillem van de Wetering
A house built on greed cannot long endure.
— Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Dragon kind was no less cruel than mankind. The Dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed.”~ A thought by Lessa ~
— Anne McCaffrey, Dragonflight
Fraud is the daughter of greed.
— Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game
If I have to build a big company by mistreating other people then the Bible says WOE to me. I don't know what that is, but I don't want any of it.
— Joyce Meyer
There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurtis Notebook
A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adective is often applied to those "liberals" who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the hightest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.
— Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation
It didn´t occur to me until later that there´s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.
— Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
Those that much covet are with gain so fond,For what they have not, that which they possessThey scatter and unloose it from their bond,And so, by hoping more, they have but less;Or, gaining more, the profit of excessIs but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.
— William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
What good is honour when greed eats away at its foundations?
— Alexandra Bracken, Passenger
Either the key to a man's wallet is in his heart, or the key to a man's heart is in his wallet. So, unless you express your charity, you are locked inside your greed.
— Noah Benshea, Jacob the Baker: Gentle Wisdom For a Complicated World
The best client is a scared millionaire.
— H.L. Mencken
Said will be a little ahead, but done should follow at his heel.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
My heart is hardy, for I have suffered much on the seas and the battlefield: this will be only something more. But a ravenous belly cannot be hid, damn the thing. It gives a world of trouble to men, makes them fit out fleets of ships and scour the barren sea, to bring misery on their enemies.
— W.H.D. Rouse, The Odyssey
Question: What do you get the man who has everything? Answer: a concious. That guy is so greedy.
— Demitri Martin
What is is plenty, but more is never enough.
— Marty Rubin
I constantly pack my pockets full of worthless trinkets, and in such misguided gorging I leave my heart empty and my soul emaciated because I have forgotten everything but trinkets.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket.
— Eric Hoffer
I was simultaneously elated and depressed, a common enough state of mind these days when people are offered a great deal of money to do something repugnant.
— James Hamilton-Paterson, Cooking with Fernet Branca
The risks in antiques fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You've never heard of a fraudster involved in a shoot-out, of the "Come and get me, copper!" sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like weather.
— Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game
Greed is a little bit more than enough.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Son, let me tell you a little something about the environment… you can try to fix it up all you want, but it’s a waste of time. Sooner or later we’ll all be doomed… slaughtered by terrorists, baked in the heat of the sun, nuked until our shadows glow… greed is good. We don’t exist to help other people, we exist to grow the hell up, have kids, get old and die, while consuming all we can. Nothing comes after. There’s no wrath, no day of reckoning… we just go. POOF! We have no reason to aspire to change the world, son. We’ll thrive by feeding off of whatever’s available. How else do you think we ended up rich? You don’t get ahead by being nice, Thomas.
— Rebecca McNutt, Bittersweet Symphony
Some needs superseded our own wellbeing, and we let ourselves be destroyed by greed and results of our own careless mistakes. We pretend not to notice, the things that meaninglessly deplete us away.
— Gayendra Abeywardane, Crocodile Chamber
We are living the American Dream, which is, of course, to benefit from someone else’s misfortune.
— John Green, Turtles All the Way Down
We are not alone!Everything has been orchestrated.If you think that the meteor that killed of the dinosaurs was natural. Think again!What use would a world of greed be if we had to worry about getting eaten by dinosaurs every minute of the day?It wouldn't be good for the economy, now would it?Think about it!
— Anthony T. Hincks
For many generations…they obeyed the laws and loved the divine to which they were akin…they reckoned that qualities of character were far more important than their present prosperity. So they bore the burden of their wealth and possessions lightly, and did not let their high standard of living intoxicate them or make them lose their self-control…But when the divine element in them became weakened…and their human traits became predominant, they ceased to be able to carry their prosperity with moderation.
— Plato, Timaeus
George Arthur, a tribal council delegate, spoke on behalf of the tribe. Arthur was a chairman, too, of the Navajo legislature's resources committee. . . ."Uranium mining and milling on and near the reservation has been a disaster for the Navajo people. The Department of the Interior has been in the pocket of the uranium industry, favoring its interest and breaching its trust duties to the Navajo mineral owners. We are still undergoing what appears to be a never-ending federal experiment to see how much devastation can be endured by a people and a society from exposure to radiation in the air, in the water, in mines and on the surface of the land. We are unwilling to be the subjects of that ongoing experiment any longer.
— Judy Pasternak, Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
The same wolfish greed beats in your heart: to have what you will, and kill for it.
— Rosamund Hodge, Crimson Bound
No stone was laid upon· another with love or reverence; no street was laid for dance or joy. One thing has been added to another in a mad scramble to fill the belly, and the streets smell of empty bellies and full bellies and bellies half full. The streets smell of a hunger which has nothing to do with love; they smell of thc belly which is insatiable and of the creations of the cmpty helly which are null and void.
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
Hoarding kings are to be pitied in their lifetimewhen they can't take their richesto the 
— Taliesin, Taliesin Poems
We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
A cause that only serves me is much like a door on the edge of a cliff, it doesn’t open to anywhere good.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
During most of my Bureau career I worked major economic fraud investigations and was amazed at the schemes con-artist and corrupt corporate and public officials would devise to steal other people’s money. I’ve also had the opportunity to work bank robberies and drug investigations. The one thing I know for sure is… With a gun you can steal hundreds. With a pen you can steal millions.
— Jerri  Williams
Paltry supply with capable means is one face of iniquity.
— Andy Harglesis
The things we love the most are the most disfiguring. Such is our greed for them.
— Nathan  Hill, The Nix
No one as consistently, spectacularly, and admittedly greedy as Donald Trump could possibly give two poops about us. Absolutely impossible. I will go so far as to say that, if elected, Donald Trump would be the least likely President in the history of our nation to do anything for any of us that wouldn't also benefit him.
— Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy, What Donald Trump Supporters Need to Know: But Are Too Infatuated to Figure Out
Indifference and greed has taken control of our lives. If a decision or mandate doesn't affect us we do not care, we do not think of the many who will suffer the consequences... Many will soon be without healthcare coverage and the healthy people do not care. The government says it will be replace with DGS... and it is true... Death Got Served.
— Maria Nieves
Well, we all got to make a livin'.""Yeah," Tom said. "On'y I wisht they was some way to make her 'thout takin' her away from somebody else.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Just as it is hard for us, in our garden, to stop weeding, because there is always another weed there in front of us, it may be hard for her to stop grazing, because there are always a few more shoots of fresh grass just ahead of her.
— Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't: Stories
Blood diamonds, she thought. That’s exactly what these are. She felt almost as superstitious as the Africans now, as if the pink diamonds themselves had somehow caused all this hardship and death.
— Mike Wells, Lust, Money & Murder, Book 9 - Escape from Sudan
Greed makes one want to get blessings without qualifying for it
— Sunday Adelaja
We had no compunction toward our enemies [the ants] and took to increasingly desperate and violent means of dealing with them. If we noticed they'd laid siege to a snack, we might trap them in a circle drawn with water and take away whatever they were eating, then watch them scurry about in confusion before wiping them off the floor with a wet cloth. I took pleasure in seeing them shrivel into black points when burning coals were rolled over them. When they attacked an unwashed pan or cup they'd soon be mercilessly drowned. I suppose initially each of us did these things only when we were alone, but in time, we began to be openly cruel. We came around to Amma's view of them as demons come to swallow our home and became a family that took pleasure in their destruction. We might have changed houses since, but habits are harder to change.
— Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar
When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren't many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity - a waste of precious time and effort.
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
But you can’t give them everything they want—they will always want more than they have.
— Marie Lu, The Midnight Star
Ah, Caderousse,' said Andrea, 'how covetous you are! Two months ago you were dying with hunger.''The appetite grows by what it feeds on,' said Caderousse.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it.
— Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
… human needs are finite, but human greed is not …
— Fritjof Capra, The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision
They listen to the music of idiots and amuse themselves with the sordid miseries of their businesses. They are not the things of angels or of any higher outpost that humanity might aspire to. Your loathsome vomitous businessman king is of the lowest order, his advisors crumbling mockeries of education driven by avarice. My love, dress them in the suits of mockery, and in their advanced state of stupidity and senility, burn and destroy them, so their ashes might join the compost which they so much deserve.
— Lou Reed, The Raven
There's more than enough for the many, but somehow never enough for the few
— Dean Cavanagh
Greed is a suit that’s tailor made: it finds a way to fit every lifestyle, no matter how much or how little you earn.
— Casey N. Cep
Greed is not a consequence of poverty. If it were so, why does the art of acquisition continue to hone and whet itself towards ever more sophisticated strategies? Why is there no end to personal betrayal, corporate espionage, and diplomatic deception among nations? In accolade to greed, even semantics and rationalization have graduated to such undreamed-of heights! History, in failing to embrace the truth, always genuflects to the orchestral swings and sways of contemporary power.
— Mariano Ngan, Cracks in the Armor
Blessed are the mendacious, for they shall grow wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
— James K. Morrow, Blameless in Abaddon
In choosing to exchange precious principles for worthless impulses, I have far too often bankrupted my soul in order to bankroll my ego.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I couldn't see much, but it somehow seemed brighter across the wall, as if the sun gave more of it's light to the west. Maybe the people there were more selfish, I thought. Because we needed that sunlight far more than they did.
— Jennifer A. Nielsen, A Night Divided
Desire is insatiable as death, but He who fills all in all can fill it. The capacity of our wishes who can measure? But the immeasurable wealth of God can more than overflow it.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
Hoarding is both unnecessary and an affront to God, who is perfectly capable of providing abundantly for those who trust in him.
— Richard B. Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture
Beware of those who are always hungry, for they will feed you to the wolves just to get paid.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irrigate with, using water mindfully, carefully. They lived in a land that answers greed with drought and death. A difficult land: aloof yet sensitive.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home
We recklessly attempt to disguise our ‘greed’ by dressing it in the garb of other nobler ideals such as ‘rights’ and ‘privileges.’ Yet, if we dare dress ‘greed’ in an authentic sense of thankfulness, greed will suffocate within the folds of that very clothing.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough, Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone: Simple Truths for Profound Living
...we steal with our eyes closed to the conditions in which the poor, who make our affluence possible, live. We covet what our neighbours have and want more of the same.
— Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective
There never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Oral Roberts is a greed-crazed white-trash lunatic who should have been hung upside down from a telephone pole on the outskirts of Tulsa 44 years ago, before he somehow transmogrified into the money-sucking animal that he became when he discovered television.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's
Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Here is a greedy man who keeps to himselfThe beautiful pears ripe in his garden.
— Bashō Matsuo, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Whenever one feels like saying “the money that billionaire spent on his fleet of yachts could have been used better by the "public sector”“, one should ask oneself when was the last time one heard of a billionaire buying an army of tanks and a set of nuclear weapons.
— Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski, The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty
A foolish environmentalist wants to save nature from the greed of the market by exposing it to the tragedy of the commons. A smart environmentalist wants to save nature from the tragedy of the commons by exposing it to the greed of the market.
— Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski, The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty
History repeats.
— Pippa DaCosta, Ties That Bind
When we are rich and famous and powerful, we do not want to die. On the other hand, if we are miserable and suffering, we want to die and leave it all. But can joy or misery last forever? There is a saying, "All celebrations must end sometime." Any wish to live forever or die immediately is often a whim of the moment. How do we know that, although we are happy now, we may not be sad the next day, or sad now but may be happy soon? Given that good and ill, fortune and misfortune come in their own way, we should not cling to life or embrace death. Life and death will come of their own. Why be greedy about life and afraid of death?
— Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
They were nothing more than modern day pagan worshippers. Congregants of a religion built on greed and hedonism. The trading floor served as their shrine
—  the phones as their Holy Grail
Why can't we say 'When!' about money the way we say 'When!' about coffee?
— Lionel Fisher, Celebrating Time Alone: Stories Of Splendid Solitude
Recently I keep thinking that this isn’t about the survival of a species. It’s about why we’re never satisfied with what we need, why we always take a bit more.
— Wu Ming-Yi
Superficial efficiency seems cheaper at first, but it costs more the long run, with the cost being pushed off onto someone other than the one who saves a few bucks.
— Matt Perman, What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done
This wasn't a person, Zuzana thought, this was greed wearing skin.
— Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods & Monsters
The easiest way to combat greed is by recognizing the value of contentment and simplicity.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
Some people take what they need from the orchard, and other people pick the orchard clean."From - "The Mind Game Company - The Players
— Andrew Neff
I am chaos eternal. I desire everything this world and the next offers. I am greed, I am hunger. Oh how I hunger... I want the pathetic mortals of this world to bow before me. I want all that they own, all they desire, every marvelous creation of theirs, but there is only one thing in this world that I need, and that, Muse, is you.
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
Your actions are catalysts to another’s actions. One could last a second, another could last to the end of mankind. Share kindness, plant the seed, help humanity overcome their greed.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries
I too often allow people to become a sterile commodity to be bartered in the service of my greed, and in doing something so absurdly reckless I foolishly barter away everything that meets my need.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
When Greed makes to money number one priority, it trust nobody
— Kishore Bansal
When he thought about how he had been slighted, condescended to, manipulated and deceived, he became angry. Obedience was a monastic virtue, but outside the cloisters it had its drawbacks, he thought bitterly. The world of power and property demanded that a man be suspicious, demanding, and insistent.
— Ken Follett
Yesterday I got a credit card application from a major bank with a variable rate of 12.99% to 20.99%. Such a deal. And what if I fall on hard times and lose my job? So, I wrote them a return letter:Dear major bank, Thank you for the opportunity to express how I really feel about your corporation. What I do appreciate, is that there is no stamp required for your return envelope. After tearing off all my personal information, so some dumpster diver doesn’t fill out your application for me, and find out he picked the wrong target; I just wanted to make one comment: Your practice of usury is despicable, along with crashing the global economy.Danny - I think I have my grandmother’s charm and wit. Too bad she’s not here to share it with. Maybe if every disgruntled person would use that free envelope and apply their creative talent, they might get the picture that we’re tired of this bullshit. Marcie, there are so many people you could visit and test your information extraction program on, so what are you people doing here? Is this just a practice run? Well, you wanted to know what I was thinking. And you wonder why I look to God for solutions. Wake me up when it’s over.Marcie - You are a crazy SOB. You want me to use my system to play Robin Hood.Danny - You’d make an excellent Robin Hood, make sure you get your merry band to sign on. Maybe that’s the reason we were connected by design. How much materialism do you really need? Some people take what they need from the orchard and other people pick the orchard clean.Marcie - You’re wondering what I’m thinking. I don’t want to mess your mind up with what I’m thinking, so let me simply say, I don’t approve of what some of these people have been doing for decades. Who do you think I am?Danny - Someone who frustrates me, don’t we have enough guessing games in life?Marcie - Marcie is a miracle worker, so what does that tell you? You do not even know what to make of me, someone who keeps coming back for you, someone who won’t let go of you.Danny - Why is it that there’s only a handful of words for truth and over 100 synonyms and derivatives for deception?Marcie - Are you surprised?Danny - It puts it in a different light when you start reading through the list. You may as well add amygdala hijacking.Marcie - Has Danny been bamboozled?Danny - You picked one with an unknown origin.Marcie - That is the best way to start a mind game.Danny - Okay, just for kicks, try saying synonym - cinnamon 10 times as fast as you can.From - "The Mind Game Company - The Players
— Andrew Neff
Clearly prize money received more serious attention than scurvy or signals.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute
the breaking of the interest slavery of productive work in all professional fields will grant it the primary position due to it. Money will once again be returned to its sole appropriate role of being a servant in the enormous enterprise of our national economy. It will become once again what it is, an indication of performed work and therewith the way will be paved to a higher goal, the rejection of the frenzied financial greed of our age.
— Gottfried Feder
Some people are only “believers” because they want God to give them things; a thrill, money, spiritual gifts etc. but they never think twice about what THEY can give to God. They are Christian parasites, always wanting more, rather than Christian servants, who are always willing to give.
— Lisa Bedrick, On the Charismatic Movement
Some prevailing signs of social climbers are their:- ticking cunning ambition- times of deceit- hand of wickedness- gloves of bigotry- hidden bunch of schemes- cup of pride- sip of prejudice- odour of greed- grit of hatredTheir favorite hunger is comparing themselves to others. A thirst of competition with sloth, jealousy and anger at their spirits.
— Angelica Hopes, Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul
You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.
— Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things
I don't know which I hate most my bills or the money I pay them with...
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
Which epitaph would you choose for your grave-stone: "He made lots of money." or "He saved the Earth"? And don't think I'm being sarcastic, because for once, I'm not. We're all going to die. What will be your legacy? Smaug-loads of money? or Saving the Earth? It's your choice.
— Steve Bivans, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living
Maybe we need to reflect on the fact that the patience of God always outruns the impatience of our greed, and that His love always outweighs the greed that outweighs our love for Him.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
If Jackson had learned one thing over the years it was that nothing, absolutely nothing, was above corruption so long as human beings were involved, because, in truth, most people were not above the lure of the dollar or other material entitlements.
— David Baldacci
Love that wants only to get, to possess, is a monstrous thing
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters
Here and there on earth there is probably a kind of continuation of love; in which this greedy desire of two people for each other gives way to a new desire and greed, a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them. But who knows such love? who has experienced it? Its true name is friendship
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
War, money and greed that is the modern heinous Trinity, and they are inseparable these days.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann, The Seven Deadly Sins
Take taking from those that give & nobody anywhere will need any more such gifts.
— Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems
Avarice is opposed to nobility.It believes that by robbing many of all they have, that it (greed) is cloaked in the nobility that is the birthmark of the people.
— Justin K. McFarlane Beau
Human beings are obscured by their desire to have and their greed to own preventing their natural cause of "being
— Victor Manan Nyambala
Some people want what they are not willing to give.
— Brenda Johnson Padgitt, Pass the Salt Please!: Seasoned Believers Add Flavor to Your Life
And greed will breed harshness and cruelty.And wealth is a maze to confuse.Once a person is warm and well-suppered, how much of such wealth can they use?
— Mitton Tony
Now, he'd loved money for money's sake. He loved the feel of it, not only in his hands, but also in his heart.
— Steven J. Carroll, Worlds Unending
The privileged individuals and families who comprise the global elite will happily bankrupt their own countrymen, decimate their own community and evict their neighbors from houses in their desperate bid to increase their wealth.
— James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand.
— Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized," Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was "sinister", a symptom of "our stupendous ignorance.
— Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Money makes people stupid. They don't have to work as hard as people who don't have money. That's why the smart people who do have money mostly use it for one thing… They use it to make sure the people without it don't get any more.
— Charlie Huston, Sleepless
Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why is has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.
— Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way
The avarice, the hunger for materialistic possessions and the dependency upon alcohol had gradually become stronger and stronger. And now, it was the sum total of what she was.
— Sue Fortin, Closing In
Human greed feeds a creed.
— Volodymyr Knyr
Men kill for many reasons, they steal but for one-greed.
— Sharon Kay Penman, Falls the Shadow
The Only Good Greed Is Greed For Enlightening Experiences
— Dean Cavanagh
I disagree. You want to bring back someone that you've lost. You might want money. Maybe you want women. Or, you might want to protect the world. These are all common things people want. Things that their hearts desire. Greed may not be good, but it's not so bad, either. You humans think greed is just for money and power! But everyone wants something they don't have.
— Hiromu Arakawa
We each make our solo voyages to deep, expansive waters. Alone in our contest with the wider world, we test our mettle and seek our trophies, promotions, compliments, and accolades. We strive to be needed and to thereby know that there is a reason for us. We seek to be told we are good because we're too unsure of ourselves to know. Yet often we remain so focused on our neediness that we forget the creatures—human and otherwise—we're drawing into the vortex of our own passion play. All of us have compulsive loves we must forbear. We forget to see that we can engage the world without harming it. And although we fish for approval, the challenge is: to capture our prizes while bringing more to the world than we take.
— Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World
I liked his attention. But I also felt like there was something sick and wrong about it. Like it might make me sick later. I thought of my grandmother, my father's mother. How when I used to visit her in Georgia she would always let me eat all the cookies and frozen egg rolls I wanted. "Go ahead, sweetheart, there's more," she would say. And it seemed okay because she was a grown-up, and I wanted all the Chips Ahoy! cookies in the bag. But I always ended up feeling extremely sick afterward. I looked at book, his eyes swollen with emotion.
— Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors
[A]nd you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestow
— Thomas Guthrie
I liked his attention. But I also felt like there was something sick and wrong about it. Like it might make me sick later. I thought of my grandmother, my father's mother. How when I used to visit her in Georgia she would always let me eat all the cookies and frozen egg rolls I wanted. "Go ahead, sweetheart, there's more," she would say. And it seemed okay because she was a grown-up, and I wanted all the Chips Ahoy! cookies in the bag. But I always ended up feeling extremely sick afterward. I looked at Bookman, his eyes swollen with emotion.
— Augusten Burroughs
Sometimes, Casey, people spend their whole lives living for a dream they can't have. And these people are so busy, so greedy for their dream that they forget all the good things they already have.
— Sarah Rubin, Someday Dancer