Quotes
Quotations and their sources in The Pursuit of Happiness?
Opening Quotations
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson, statesman
United States Declaration of Independence, 1776
He knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the
wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted.
- Willa Cather, novelist
"Paul's Case," a short story from The Troll Garden, 1905
"My Inheritance" by Meera Nair
There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy,
or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or
at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel
for the death of friends.
- Miguel de Cervantes, novelist, playwright, poet
Don Quixote, pt. II, IV 74, 1605
Where there is money there is fighting.
- Marion Anderson, singer, U.N. delegate
Marion Anderson, by Kosti Vehanan, 1941
"What Growth Is, What Growth Does" by Benjamin Friedman
The love of money is the root of all evil.
- St. Paul the Apostle
Bible, 1 Tim. 6:10
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
- Mark Twain, humorist, journalist, lecturer, and novelist
Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays,
1891-1910, 1992
"Reversal of Fortune" by Bill McKibben
Money is the dear thing which,
If you're not careful, you can
squander
your whole life thinking of...
- Mary Jo Slater, poet
A Benediction, 1994
One more such victory and we will be completely lost.
- Pyrrhus, king of Hellenistic Epirus, 279BCE
(trans. Plutarch Moralia, 184 C)
"The Stool Makers of Jobra Village" by Muhammad Yunus
Everything costs a lot of money when you haven't got any.
- Joe Louis, boxer, world heavy weight champion, 1965
Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his
faculties such changes in the external circumstances both of
himself and others, as may seem most favourable to the
happiness of all.
- Adam Smith, social philosopher and political economist
Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759
"The Rocking Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is
required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
- Henry David Thoreau, essayist, practical philosopher
Walden, 1854
There is no wealth but life.
- John Ruskin, critic of art, architecture, and society
Unto This Last, 1862
Closing Quotations
One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make
happiness: one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky
hour, at the world's end somewhere, and hold fast to the days...
- Willa Cather, novelist, 1902
Willa Cather in Europe, 1956
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and
wealth have both failed.
- Kin Hubbard (1868- 1930), cartoonist, humorist, journalist
The Hoosier Humor of Kin Hubbard, complied by Jack Strobe, 1970
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