“Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

Il faut compter ses richesses par les moyens qu'on a de satisfaire ses désirs.
Part 2, p. 153; translation p. 83.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).

Francis Selwyn, Hitler's Englishman (Penguin Books, 1987), p. 43
Speech at Chiswick, 1934.

What do you think of the plan for a mosque in New York City near Ground Zero? (28 June 2010)
2010s

Attributed in American Quotations (1992) by Gorton Carruth and Eugene H. Ehrlich, p. 149
1990s

As quoted in Seeking Peace : Notes and Conversations Along the Way (1998) by Johann Christoph Arnold, p. 155
Context: Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided. Yet time and time again one hears it said that since we have been put into a conflicting world, we have to adapt to it. Oddly, this completely unchristian idea is most often espoused by so-called Christians, of all people. How can we expect a righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)
Context: The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.