Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
“How is it possible for me to thank God in my heart for the food he gives me and for life, while every morsel I eat I earn with my toil and even suffering? There may be a Providence for the rich man, but every poor man must be his own Providence. As for the value of life, we poor folks don’t live for ourselves at all; we live for other people. I often wonder if the rich man who owns great blocks of stock in the road and reckons his wealth in the millions does not sometimes think, as he sits at his well-filled table and looks at the happy faces of his children, of the poor car driver who toils for his benefit for a dollar and ninety cents a day, and is lucky if he tastes meat twice a week and can give the little ones at home warm clothes and blankets for the winter.”
Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 17 (p. 252)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Jack Finney 15
Novelist, short story writer 1911–1995Related quotes
Bion, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 4: The Academy
“Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments”
No. 163 (8 October 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)
Context: Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.
The Ayn Rand Column ‘Introducing Objectivism’
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
Si est del riche orguillus:
Ja del povre n'avra merci
Pur sa pleinte ne pur sun cri;
Mes se cil s'en peüst vengier,
Dunc le verreit l'um suzpleier.
Fables, no. 10, "The Fox and the Eagle", line 18; cited from Mary Lou Martin (trans.) The Fables of Marie de France (Birmingham, Alabama: Summa, 1984) pp. 54-6. Translation from the same source, p. 55.