
Article on Wealth
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)
Lycurgus, sec. 8. The bolded phrase is often quoted in a paraphrase by Ugo Foscolo: "Wealth and poverty are the oldest and most deadly ailments of all republics" (Le ricchezze e la povertà sono le più antiche e mortali infermità delle repubbliche), Monitore Italiano, 5 February 1798.
Parallel Lives
Article on Wealth
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)
1900s, A Square Deal (1903)
Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (University of Chicago Press: 2017), p. 19
“Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.”
As reported by Charles Simmons in A Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker, containing over a thousand subjects alphabetically and systematically arranged (North Wrentham, Mass. 1852), p. 103 http://books.google.de/books?id=YOAyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA103&dq=socrates. However, the original source of this statement is unknown.
Cf. Joseph Addison in The Spectator No. 574 Friday, July 30, 1714, p. 655 http://books.google.de/books?id=K1cdAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA655&dq=socrates: In short, content is equivalent to wealth, and luxury to poverty; or, to give the thought a more agreeable turn, "content is natural wealth," says Socrates: to which I shall add, "luxury is artificial poverty.".
Attributed
Edwatch conference, October 10-11, 2003
on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's "Tax-Free Zones" initiative
2000s
Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 105.
1926
Context: A character founded on pietas and gravitas had its roots in truth, and I am proud to think that the English word has been held in no less honour than the Roman... It is from Ammian, who wrote while the legions were leaving Britain, that we learn that the Roman word could no longer be trusted. That is to me a far more significant portent than the aggregation of the population in cities, the immense luxury, and the exhaustion of the permanent sources of wealth, all of which combined to sap that very character whose continued existence was necessary for the life of the State.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 231.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 455.