“My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.”

—  Edward Bulwer-Lytton , book Vril

Source: The Coming Race (1870), Chapter 1. This is the origin of the phrase "pursuit of the almighty dollar". Washington Irving coined the expression almighty dollar itself.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I …" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton photo
Edward Bulwer-Lytton 31
English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician 1803–1873

Related quotes

Hilaire Belloc photo

“I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) edited by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 829
As quoted in Traveling for Her: An Inspirational Guide (2008) by Amber Israelsen, p. 2
Variant: I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this — we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

Charlotte Salomon photo

“I became my mother, my grandmother. I learned to travel all their paths and became all of them... I knew I had a mission, and no power on earth could stop me.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Quote, 1941-43; as cited in 'The obsessive art and great confession of Charlotte Salomon' https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-obsessive-art-and-great-confession-of-charlotte-salomon by Toni Bentley, in 'The New Yorker', 15 July, 2017
Charlotte wrote of the dead women in her family: her mother and grandmother; both committed suicide

Steve Jobs photo

“I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Interview in the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996)
1990s

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
Context: After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.

Lila Downs photo

“I also come from a matriarchal family. My grandmother was left alone, not by choice. And then my mother as well. We lost my father when I was 16; he died. I was an adolescent figuring out that you’re not really worth much when you’re all women…”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On how her village shunned Downs’ solely female household in “Lila Downs Reminds Us of the Strength Women Bring to Latin America and its History” https://sheshredsmag.com/lila-downs-14/ in She Shreds (2018 May 3)
Womanhood

John Stuart Mill photo
John Irving photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Maurice Maeterlinck photo
Ronda Rousey photo

Related topics