COVETOUSNESS

Adams, Thomas
The covetous man pines in plenty, like Tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty.

Bacon, Francis
If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.

Burton, Richard E.
Covetous men are fools, miserable wretches, buzzards, madmen, who live by themselves, in perpetual slavery, fear, suspicion, sorrow, discontent, with more of gall than honey in their enjoyments; who are rather possessed by their money than possessors of it; bound 'prentices to their property; mean slaves and drudges to their substance.

Colton, Caleb C.
After hypocrites, the greatest dupes the devil has are those who exhaust an anxious existence in the disappointments and vexations of business, and live miserably and meanly only to die magnificently and rich.—They serve the devil without receiving his wages, and for the empty foolery of dying rich, pay down their health, happiness, and integrity.

Decker, Thomas
When all sins are old in us and go upon crutches, covetousness does but then lie in her cradle.

Luzy, Dorothee
Why are we so blind?—That which we improve, we have; that which we hoard,  is not for  ourselves.

Penn, William
The only gratification a covetous man gives his neighbors, is, to let them see that he himself is as little better for what he has, as they are.

Plato
Refrain from covetousness, and thy estate shall prosper.

South, Robert
The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in everything and part with nothing.

Covetousness is both the beginning and end of the devil's alphabet—the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

Shakespeare, William
Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.

Spenser, Edmund
A man may as easily fill a chest with grace as the heart with gold.—The air fills not the body, neither does money the covetous heart of man.

Sprat, Thomas
Covetousness, by a greediness of getting more, deprives itself of the true end of getting; it loses the enjoyment of what it had got.

Taylor, Jeremy
Covetousness swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes.

Tillotsonn, John
The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy, but to have them; he starves himself in the midst of plenty; cheats and robs himself of that which is his own, and makes a hard shift to be as poor and miserable with a great estate as any man can be without it.