“Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.”

— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Wer die materiellen Genüsse des Lebens seinen idealen Gütern vorzieht, gleicht dem Besitzer eines Palastes, der sich in den Gesindestuben einrichtet und die Prachtsäle leer stehen lässt.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 53.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 3, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the…" by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach?

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach photo

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach81

Austrian writer 1830–1916

Related quotes

“… the bourgeois, who is not a real owner, but the servant of his avarice”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 62

“Most men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed off wings where he never ventures.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

Presque tous les hommes ressemblent à ces grands palais déserts dont le propriétaire n'habite que quelques pièces; et il ne pénètre jamais dans les ailes condamnées.
Journal, 1932-1939 (Paris: Table ronde, 1947) p. 6; Adrienne Foulke (trans.) Second Thoughts (Plainview, NY: Books for Libraries Press, [1961] 1973) p. 142.

“I think some of us found that we were getting to cling much more loosely to material wealth, and to realise that wealth was made to be a servant and not a master—that as a servant it had a most useful function to perform, that as a master it meant damnation.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 61-62.
1925

“Nothing of that which was gained by fraud can go to the liberation of his soul. Let his wealth be divided among the workmen of this our building, and the poorer servants of our palace.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

“I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

“Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know every bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Consider the world as an abode where in you have dropped down for an hour, then you have got to leave it and go ahead; or (suppose it is) like the wealth which you lay hands upon in a dream and become over-joyed and glad. Then you wake up to find yourself empty handed.”

Muhammad al-Baqir (677–733) fifth of the Twelve Shia Imams

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 287

“Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than to submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. It is a strange part of the other America that one finds in the intellectual slums.”

Michael Harrington book The Other America

Source: The Other America (1962), Ch. 5, sct. 1

“The intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Vienna is in my blood: my heart beats in three-quarter time.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

“There are a large number of people in the room, but one is unaware of them. They are in the books. At times they move among the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Source: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Related topics