Real Life Money Quotes & Sayings

The message would be that the purpose of life is not to eat and drink, watch television and so on. Consuming is not the aim of life. Earning as much money as one can is not the real purpose of life. There is a superior entity, a divinity, le divin as we say in French that is worth thinking about, as are our feelings of wholeness, respect and love, if we can. A society in which these feelings are widespread would be more reasonable than the society the West presently lives in. — Bernard D'Espagnat

No young man starting in life could have better capital than plenty of friends. They will strengthen his credit, support him in every great effort, and make him what, unaided, he could never be. Friends of the right sort will help him more - to be happy and successful - than much money. — Orison Swett Marden

One of the strangest things in life is the false ideas everywhere prevalent regarding the nature of happiness. The general belief seems to be that it is founded on things that can be bought with money. The more money the more things, and the more things the more enjoyment, the greater the degree of happiness. But money has never yet been known to buy happiness. No one has ever yet found happiness by chasing it over the earth. It is not in our food, it is not in our drink, it is not in our clothes or material possessions; it is not in excitement or a constant round of pleasure. Happiness is born of right living. It is the child of right thinking, and right acting, of helpful service. A selfish life never knows real happiness. Greed and envy never touch it. — Orison Swett Marden

Every agent has a Sig Weiss - as a rosy dream. You sit there day after day paddling through oceans of slush, hoping one day to run across a manuscript that means something - sincerity, integrity, high word rates - things like that. You try to understand what editors want in spite of what they say they want, and then you try to tell it to writers who never listen unless they're talking. You lend them money and psychoanalyze them and agree with them when they lie to themselves. When they write stories that don't make it, it's your fault. When they write stories that do make it, they did it by themselves. And when they hit the big time, they get themselves another agent. In the meantime, nobody likes you. — Theodore Sturgeon

I suck at it? You're acting like this is some stupid play you've put together for the neighbors. This is real life, and I'm doing the best I can." "My plays were not stupid. We made a lot of money in admission tickets. I thought Annie was excellent." He snorted. "You can't even sing and you cast yourself as Annie." "You're still pissed because I wouldn't let you play Daddy Warbucks." He plowed ten fingers through his hair and made a noise deep in his throat. "How the hell do you get me on these ridiculous subjects? — Jennifer Probst

Greed is a strange, strange sin.
All you want to do is acquire. Acquire money, acquire material, acquire time, acquire energy, acquire attention. The running mantra is "I want, I want, I want" but that quickly turns to "I need, I need, I need."
Suddenly there just isn't enough time for friends, for family, for anyone. Your goal is to acquire and to make sure what you acquire stays acquired. Your life depends on it. You don't see truth because the truth is shadowed by enormous homes, incredibly fast cars, in lavish spending. Your life no longer belongs to you, but you are blind to it all because those around you are seeking the same.
So you shuffle along at an impossible rate, and you pass the real world around you.
But what you'll come to realize, altogether too late, is that it's never enough.
It's simply never enough — Amelie Fisher

The theater has fallen into the hands of real estate men and syndicates and those who have no love or interest in the stage or its life, but who have considered it principally as a means to make money. — Eva Le Gallienne

Modern life is, for most of us, a kind of serfdom to mortgage, job and the constant assault to consume. Although we have more time and money than ever before, most of us have little sense of control over our own lives. It is all connected to the apathy that means fewer and fewer people vote. Politicians don't listen to us anyway. Big business has all the power; religious extremism all the fear. But in the garden or allotment we are king or queen. It is our piece of outdoors that lays a real stake to the planet. — Monty Don

I missed you," she said softly, her breath against his cheek making his body harden everywhere.
"You too."
"It's terrible to be this infatuated."
"I agree."
"I haven't felt this alive in years."
"Me either."
"Screw the interview," she said breathlessly. "Let's make out."
He saw stars. Literally. Stars. How was this possibly his life? Beautiful women did not show up on the doorsteps of disabled vets and proposition them.
"Are you an alien?" he asked.
"Not that I know of."
"Are we on Candid Camera?"
She took a quick look around the room. "You never know, but my guess is no."
"Is someone paying you a vast sum of money to make me feel like this?"
She bit her lower lip, as if deep in thought. "Not that I recall, but if a million dollars suddenly hits my account, I'll give you half."
"You must be for real. Fine. You win. Let's go make out. — Katy Regnery

Bring real and practical life experience to the people — Sunday Adelaja

Who can estimate the real wealth that inheres in a fine character ... How base and mean money and huge estates look in comparison. All other things fade before it. Its touch is like magic to win friendship, influence, power. Can you afford to chill, to discourage, to crush out of your life this sweet, sensitive plant, which would flower in your nature and give added glory to your life, for the sake of a few dollars, a little questionable fame? — Orison Swett Marden

Money can give the soul comfort, but it can never buy true, real and eternal life in Christ Jesus for the soul, and though it can make the soul lively, it can never guarantee its true eternal life in Christ! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The more you experience love, the more full of it you should be. But the opposite sometimes happens, because you fear the loss of life. You fear the vulnerability that can take the goodness of it away. This might have happened because when i was just a kid, i had the sense that your whole life can change with a death in the family. It's like they say - at least i say - It's the loss of money that leads to the love of it. You know, the people who care about money are never the people who made a lot. They're the people who have lost a lot. And I think that might be true in relationships, when if you've lost somebody important to you early on, you live in fear of that the rest of your life. I suppose that's one of the things that I would fear, and that might explain the rage you referred to earlier, which is real in me, at some point, it really is. An odd thing to own up to, but I do know it's true. — Michka Assayas

the progress of real purpose is crippled where lack of money is equated to lack of zeal — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Most people think the more money, luxury or fame they have, the more successful they are; but I think that the true sign of success depends on how many positive emotions they experience each day. — Maddy Malhotra

If we lived for ever, what you say would be true. But we have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. I love death - not morbidly, but because He explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. . . . Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him. Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him. — E. M. Forster

Why of your own accord postpone your real life to the distant future? Shall you wait for some interest to fall due, or for some income on your merchandise, or for a place in the will of some wealthy old man, when you can be rich here and now. Wisdom offers wealth in ready money, and pays it over to those in whose eyes she has made wealth superfluous. These — Seneca.

A self-made man, if he is made at all, has already won the battle of life ... he has learned to resist. He has learned the value of money, and how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how the conversion of it into useful things will make of his life something worthwhile. He has learned to say no, to say no at the right time and then to stand by it. Without resistance, and the self-denial which it often imposes, there is no real happiness. In the quest for happiness man must learn that temptation resisted strengthens the mind and the soul. — Alvin R. Dyer

We discussed this dire problem with education and illusions of academic contribution, with Ivy League universities becoming in the eyes of the new Asian and U.S. upper class a status luxury good. Harvard is like a Vuitton bag or a Cartier watch. It is a huge drag on the middle-class parents who have been plowing an increased share of their savings into these institutions, transferring their money to administrators, real estate developers, professors, and other agents. In the United States, we have a buildup of student loans that automatically transfer to these rent extractors. In a way it is no different from racketeering: one needs a decent university "name" to get ahead in life; but we know that collectively society doesn't appear to advance with organized education. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I've always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that's the real test. — Robert Fulghum

Too often we make a separation in our lives - there is work and there is life outside work, where we find real pleasure and fulfillment. Work is often seen as a means for making money so we can enjoy that second life that we lead. Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers we still tend to compartmentalize our lives in this way. This is a depressing attitude, because in the end we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get through on the way to real pleasure, then our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live. — Robert Greene

When I use the words 'inner journey', I simply mean that you have looked at one aspect of the journey in your life called 'outer', now try to look at another aspect of the journey called 'inner'. You have been running after money, now run after meditation. You have been running after power, now run after God. Both are running. Once you start running after meditation then one day I will tell you, 'Now drop meditation too. Now stop running.' And when you stop running then real meditation happens. — Rajneesh

In real life you are doomed if you believe in youth and money, but not here in Hollywood. Nothing is what it seems. — Amanda Eliasch

Money fascinates me... It has the power to make and break nations... It determines a person's quality of life and limits us as a race what we're capable of accomplishing, yet it has no true value other than what we've placed on it. It's a man-made concept, yet it holds us back, keeps us from achieving well, everything. Peace. Equality. Just think of the scientific discoveries we've had to forgo because of a lack of funding. And it's all made up. none of it's real. — S.L. Madden

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency. — Alan W. Watts

In the frenzy of modern life we lose sight of the real value of humanity. People become the sum total of what they produce. Human beings act like machines whose function is to make money. This is absolutely wrong. The purpose of making money is the happiness of humankind, not the other way round. Humans are not for money, money is for humans. We need enough to live, so money is necessary, but we also need to realize that if there is too much attachment to wealth, it does not help at all. As the saints of India and Tibet tell us, the wealthier one becomes, the more suffering one endures. — Dalai Lama XIV

The enemy is noise. By noise I mean not simply the noise of technology, the noise of money or advertising and promotion, the noise of the media, the noise of miseducation, but the terrible excitement and distraction generated by the crises of modern life. Mind, I don't say that philistinism is gone. It is not. It has found many disguises, some highly artistic and peculiarly insidious. But the noise of life is the great threat. Contributing to it are real and unreal issues, ideologies, rationalizations, errors, delusions, nonsituations that look real, nonquestions demanding consideration, opinions, analyses in the press, on the air, expertise, inside dope, factional disagreement, official rhetoric, information - in short, the sounds of the public sphere, the din of politics, the turbulence and agitation that set in about 1914 and have now reached an intolerable volume. — Saul Bellow

I will tell you one other thing about money: when you don't have it, it sure as hell affects the quality of people's health, and their relationships. And paper money isn't even real today, right? It's all really ones and zeros in computers today. But at the same time, if you don't have it, it certainly affects the quality of your life. — Tony Robbins

Real wealth is discretionary time. Money is simply fuel for your life. You can always make another dollar, but you can't make another minute. Don't let the pursuit of money erode your wealth. — Alan Weiss

How had he got here? Only a few minutes ago he'd been a kid, riding his bike to school, collecting comics, doing homework and watching TV. Over the years, a few trappings of adulthood had insinuated themselves into his life withoutmaking significant inroads. Real adult life seemed to exist over there, somewhere as distant and unreachable as Uranus. He had no idea how people crossed over to this place, or why - the demands of being grown up seemed exhausting. Look how I work all the time. See my silky girlfriend. Watch me exchange money for food. Admire my blood pressure. — Meg Rosoff

If you are preaching on the first commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") or Ephesians 5:5 (which calls greed idolatry) or any of the several hundred other places in the Bible that speak of idols, you could quote David Foster Wallace, the late postmodern novelist. In his Kenyon College commencement speech he argues eloquently and forcefully that "everyone worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."32 He goes on to say everyone has to "tap real meaning in life," and whatever you use to do that, whether it is money, beauty, power, intellect, or something else, it will drive your life because it is essentially a form of worship. He enumerates why each form of worship does not merely make you fragile and exhausted but can "eat you alive." If you lay out his argument in support of fundamental biblical teaching, even the most secular audience will get quiet and keep listening to what you say next. — Timothy J. Keller

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean - even if it did build muscle - whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same me but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period ... the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities. — Christopher Hitchens

How do I define success? Let me tell you, money's pretty nice. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful, because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. — Oprah Winfrey

It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world. — Gore Vidal

We are a generation of lovers who long to be loved. We spend exorbitant amounts of money to compel others to delight in us. We construct our ideal life on Facebook because we are unsatisfied with our real life, which is tainted with boredom, loneliness, insecurity, and a lack of friends and followers . We do not enjoy the person God created us to be or the life God has gifted us with. We think we are overweight, underweight, too pale, too dark, too plain, or just plain boring. Yet we crave to be delighted in by a significant other. So we pursue misguided avenues to make ourselves delightful, to satisfy our craving to be loved.
Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (pp. 118-119). — Preston Sprinkle

Money at the service of life can be managed in the right way by cooperatives, on condition that it is a real cooperative where capital does not have command over men but men over capital. — Pope Francis

I realized you might make money at writing, and you might even make a living at it. So after that I didn't write stories just for the class but wrote them for the purpose of submitting them somewhere, and at some point in the process, I began writing them just to please myself and that's where you begin to see the real value of a life of writing. — Dean Koontz

When you love God for real, you will love His creation — Sunday Adelaja

The God that is nearest to you in the people around you is the real one you need — Sunday Adelaja

What's real is always worth it,' she explained to me. 'Look how it's made.' She showed me the shoulders, the way they were knit together with a separate yoke instead of a seam. 'You'll wear it your whole life. — Janet Fitch

The real problem is I'm greedy. I want complete, utter, unceasing bliss. But I don't want to fall into it either. If happiness were money I wouldn't want to win the lottery. I want to accomplish it, urn it as John Houseman would say. I want it to be an achievement because I want to be in control of my life. I don't want things to happen to me, I want them to happen because of me. Power I want. I want to feel the way I do when I stretch a new canvas and I want to feel that way all the time. the blank canvas fills me with the power of imminent creation. I'm its god an it always bends to my will and when I'm done I know, inside, that it's markedly better than what almost all of my similarly-engaged others can achieve. That's happiness. — Sergio De La Pava

Audiences and critics they don't like seeing what happens in real life. Why do you think comedies make all the money at the box office? People want to go and laugh. I can understand that. — Channing Tatum

Money is the "god of this world," and it empowers millions of people to enjoy life by living on substitutes. With money, they can buy entertainment, but they can't buy joy. They can go to the drugstore and buy sleep, but they can't buy peace. Their money will attract lots of acquaintances but very few real friends. Wealth gains them admiration and envy but not love. It buys the best in medical services, but it can't buy health. — Warren W. Wiersbe

The UK office for National Statistics has identified the things that matter most for happiness as "health, relationships, work, and the environment" - a list that tallies closely with our basic goods. Given that our lives have not noticeably improved in these respects since 1974 it is hardly surprising that we do not feel any happier.
Are we then suggesting a return to living standards of 1974? Not necessarily, for the luxuries acquired since then may, even if they have added nothing to our real well-being, be painful to forgo. This is an instance of the general truth that damaging social changes cannot always be rectified simply by being reversed, any more than a man flattened by a steamroller can be restored to life by being run over backwards. What we are saying is that the long-term goal of economic policy should henceforth not be growth, but the restructuring of our collective existence so as to facilitate the good life. — Robert Skidelsky

Because I had to sell it and lost a shit-ton of money the moment I realized you were going to be my neighbor if I stayed in my current place. Real talk, Rosie, you are all I ever wanted. Even when you wanted me to be with your sister. She was a comforting candle. You were the dazzling sun. I'd lived in the dark - for your selfish ass. And if you think I'm going to settle for something, you're dead wrong. I am taking everything. We will have kids, Rose LeBlanc. We will have a wedding. And we will have joy and vacations and days where we just fuck and days where we just fight and days where we just live. Because this is life, Baby LeBlanc, and I love the fuck out of you, so I'm going to give you the best one there is. Got it? — L.J. Shen

Many persons think that by hoarding money they are gaining safety for themselves. If money is your only hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless. The security even of money depends on knowledge, experience, and ability. If productive ideas are displaced by destructive ideas, economic life suffers. — Henry Ford

To all the young people out there who think money and fame is important: that's only a small piece of the pie. You need an education to be totally secure in life. I feel very secure I can go get a real job now. — Shaquille O'Neal

Were all the pleasures in the world, even pure air, made solely for the rich? I think it is immoral - it is horrible! - that one man may own twenty millions of money, and another has to commit a crime to keep the life in his miserable body. And if I were wealthy, I'd be a spendthrift! It's the spendthrifts who are the real friends of the poor. Some of their money filters through to the very lowest classes ... — Ellen Buckingham Mathews

Real progress cannot be measured by money alone. We must ensure that economic growth contributes to our quality of life, rather than degrading it — Tony Blair

College does not equal job security. Entrepreneurship does not equal job security. For heaven's sake, "job security" does not equal job security. So what do you do? Don't be a one-trick pony. Add real value in everything you do. But most of all, study and apply business models. No matter what discipline you come from. Learn how to add value so that value can flow in the form of money to you. That, my friends, is job security. Learn where money comes from and you'll know where to turn when life throws a curve. — Richie Norton

Fallon continued. "We learned in school that bullies abuse others because they feel bad about themselves. They're hurting." She brought up her knees and locked her arms around them, her tone light and taunting. "We shouldn't be mad. We should pity them." Madoc has never had to make a real decision in his entire life, which means he's never had anything real. This house, the cars, the money. It's all an illusion. It's like parading a victory when you missed the war." She took a breath and whispered slowly. "Madoc has no idea who he is. — Penelope Douglas

But nothing could be held true for the rest of one's life, every coveted thing in the end was maya, illusion, a myth, and this the great sages of India had always understood --- little was real. We were put on this earth transitorily; we deposited our genes in offspring; deluded ourselves that we would be missed when we were gone; pretended that money, wealth, titles, and land were to be desired. But every such thing was ephemeral, prone to change. The only reason to live was love. — Indu Sundaresan

But I've learned that if you fake your death, don't come back. Not for your wife. Not for your girlfriend. Not for your kids. If you fake your death, don't do it at sea. Go for a hike. If you're interested in claiming a life insurance payout, don't get greedy. Keep the policy modest. Don't bother with a stand-in body and an elaborate funeral. Spend your time and money on obtaining quality authenticating documents. In your new life, commit to a disguise for your new identity and use your real first name. Don't google yourself and lead your hunters to your hideout. And for the love of God, don't drive if you're supposed to be dead. Ditch the car. — Elizabeth Greenwood

The Real Life from the Heart is not to Discover the Value of Money. — Jan Jansen

Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts. — John Stossel

Please do not look only at the dark side
All the newspapers in the free world explain why you return their readers understand how you feel
You have the sympathy of millions
As a tribute to your sorrow we resolve to spend more money on nuclear weapons there is always a bright side
If this were only a movie a boat would be available have you ever seen our movies they end happily
You would lean at the rail with 'him' the sun would set on China kiss and fade
You would marry one of the kind authorities
In our movies there is no law higher than love in real life duty is higher
You would not want the authorities to neglect duty
How do you like the image of the free world sorry you cannot stay
This is the first and last time we will see you in our papers
When you are back home remember us we will be having a good time. — Thomas Merton

And as for what I've learned: be an instrument of peace. Be a gentleman at all costs. Enjoy yourself - have fun with your existence. Learn to listen to your inner voice and don't overdose on yourself. Keep your darkness in check. Let music be a healing force. Be a real musician: once you start counting money before notes, you're a full-time wannabe. Put your guitar down and go outside and take a long drink of light with your eyes. Go walk in the park and take off your shoes and socks and feel the grass under your feet and mud between your toes. Go see a baby smiling, go see a wino crawling, go see life. Feel life - all of it, as much as possible. Find a human melody, then write a song about it. Make it all come through your music. — Carlos Santana

My books rustled by like a military of ducks. My mother had never liked my books. She'd said they kept me from real life, by which I think she meant men, or money, or both. Always accusing things of precisely the crimes they hadn't committed.
(From the short story: Once an Empire) — Rivka Galchen

Money comes with a price, and for me, the price is both freedom and a real life. — Savi Sharma

I am the same artist with the same nagging questions I had in my early 20's. What's real and what isn't? How do we tell what's real in our lives? How do we see things as they are? What is my role in life? If the Signature hadn't forced the issue by devoting its season to my plays, I could at least believe I had changed. Really, they're all the same! What is SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION but THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES with money? — John Guare

There will always be businesses and companies, trying to make money from you, but that's not the problem. The real problem is that you're feeding the Beast. You're allowing him to run free and overpower your Angel, and that is reflected in your financial life. It's the reason your paycheck comes and goes, and it makes prosperity impossible. — Celso Cukierkorn

I'm just saying that once that have an excuse, people will do anything. They do what they are told, and they take their money and they think it's all okay because it's just their job, while their real self is what happens after work, when they're bouncing a baby on the knee, or writing poems about snowflakes or whatever. — Paul Murray

A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

I've come to believe that what we need is a republic. People need to be run by people who like them, not boxed into a game they can't win by people who can't lose it. We need a head of state who's been on the run. An interior minister who's had the two o'clock knock and done solitary. A minister of agriculture who's seen a spade fired in anger and done twenty years on the land. A health minister who's had his life saved through swift transportation to a well-staffed, properly equipped hospital. An interior minister dedicated to dismantling the state with its futile bureaucratic waste and saving real money. And a police force that would put an end to the Bowmans of this world. — Derek Raymond

You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven't you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you've seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?" She made a tiny spitting sound. "You can always get some more people. they reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format. Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It's the axiomatic truth of our times. — Richard K. Morgan

Some people want to give money to their children, buy houses, go on a holiday - whatever it is that they want to invest in. This particular journey has been something that I wanted to do most of my life, but there was no real opportunity to do so. — Sarah Brightman

The real currency of life is not money but love. Real success comes not from earning but from giving. — Debasish Mridha

The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living. — David O. McKay

The Conditioned Mind / shuts off magical vision and gnosis / gives up freedom, truth, real choices / loses sight of love, trust, and social coherence / loses touch with organic life, gives way to interference // risks personal wellbeing, peace of heart, balance of mind / is tricked into believing we need power, money, lies / and people to lead us by the nose into violence and war / is hypnotised, drugged, poisoned, misinformed. — Jay Woodman

I'm interested in connecting with readers and strangers through poetry. I want to create real intimacy with my poems. Whether I do that through pulling from my personal life or using my fantasy life - or say history, whether that history is personal history or our collective histories - what's important is that an experience is created. An experience that will hopefully matter to people and feel real. I want my poems to move people and make them want to live their lives, however complicated and impossible those lives may be. I think a poem can speak to the life you currently live but also to the lives you've lived before, the ones to come and also those you've yet to imagine. What else can do that? Not sex or money or other people. — Alex Dimitrov

TV and popular film and most kinds of 'low' art
which just means art whose primary aim is to make money
is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas 'serious' art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. — David Foster Wallace

By the 1980s beauty had come to play in women's status-seeking the same role as money plays in that of men: a defensive proof to aggressive competitors of womanhood or manhood. Since both value systems are reductive, neither reward is ever enough, and each quickly loses any relationship to real-life values. — Naomi Wolf

And I have to tell you, as tough as farming is, the idea of farming when you're losing money year after year ... that's not life even, that's like death. That's eternal damnation. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Real love is love for love's sake. I do not ask health or money or life or salvation. — Swami Vivekananda

That's what so many people didn't understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes. — Orson Scott Card

For me to accept baptism, I had to believe in Christ's reality - in the reality not just of his life but also of his miracles and death and resurrection. But how could I? Such things don't happen. Look around you. There are no miracles. There can be no resurrection. The clockwork world is all in all. But such things don't happen, I knew now, was the ultimate irrational prejudice of the human mind: the belief that the symbols of reality are more real than the reality they symbolize. That's us all over. We believe that money is more valuable than the work it represents, that sex is more essential than the love it expresses, that an actor is more admirable than the hero he portrays, that flesh is more alive than spirit. That's the whole nature of our deluded lives, the cause of so much of our misery. — Andrew Klavan

When we are children, we often have no real responsibilities. We don't have to earn money to buy food or pay the rent. Because of this, when we are children, we can dream big because there are no obstacles to stop us. We imagine the life we want to have when we become adults. As we grow, the responsibilities pile up. We need to get good grades in school. We want to make enough money to buy something we desire. We get married and have to raise a family. The accompanying stresses also pile on. All of them grind us down little by little until we either have to alter our original dream of what our life would be like or defer the date we expect to achieve our goal. — The Prophet Of Life

I have a real passion for driving. Earlier on in my life I wanted to be a race car driver. But I don't pay an extortionate amount of money for cars. I'm pretty frugal. — John Barrowman

For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people - a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance. - William Longgood, The Queen Must Die — Susan Wiggs

So, make a real effort to avoid getting sucked into all the expensive lifestyle habits of typical Americans. Because if you do that, then people with the money will dictate what you do with your life. — Richard Stallman

Selfishness so often is the basis of money problems, which are a very serious and real factor affecting the stability of family life. Selfishness is at the root of adultery, the breaking of solemn and sacred covenants to satisfy selfish lust. Selfishness is the antithesis of love. It is a cankering expression of greed. It destroys self-discipline. It obliterates loyalty. It tears up sacred covenants. It afflicts both men and women. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Pimping is an art, Whoreson. There are very few pimps in this world who can really take the title of being a pimp. Just because a man gets his money from a whore, that don't make him no true pimp. Real pimps are really rare. — Donald Goines

Damn it. Why didn't the United States know when to declare a real war? Those running the country he loved were making a mockery of it. Misusing the word war had become a joke, like The War on Drugs or The War on Women. What was taking place in Guatemala was being run the same way as the fake War on Terror. Similar to Afghanistan, it didn't take long before he realized he was in a no man's land where the dead piled up in silence and the living had nothing to say. Hordes of beggars and gang members roamed the area seeking food, money or young women to rape. Life was cheap. People were killed for a pair of shoes or a handful of pills. — Ava Armstrong

I can't put a number on what I need babe..The perfect man doesn't just come out of a catalog. I can't just request him with a checklist and pay for him at the checkout line. Things don't just happen like that, at least not in my world. I want a real father for my daughter, not just some sperm donor that has never seen her. I want a man in my life to teach my daughter to ride a bicycle, to be cleaning that shot gun on her first date, to be her crying shoulder when she has a bad breakup. I need that man in my life and no amount of money can bring him to me" Truthfully — Anne Walker

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing. There are three faithful friends in our life,an old wife,an old dog and ready money. A real friend is one who always warms you.
Love is blind. Friendship close it eyes. — Benjamin Franklin

The universe is a great unknown wonderful place, and we know nothing, really, to speak of about it. I think that either depresses and frightens one or is exhilarating. We are very important, and we're not important in quite the way we think we are. Each one of us is unique, and we can find out a whole lot just by examining ourselves. I think that's the essential thing. Not paying attention to how you're going to make money, just paying attention to whatever is around you. Each one of those seconds is your only chance. It's your life. And it's wonderful. The more attention that we pay to our ordinary lives leads to a real elation that we're here at all. — W.S. Merwin

In real life our behavior is far more complex than the textbook allows and often confounds the idea that we're purely rational. We don't save enough for retirement even though it's to our clear economic advantage to do so. We hang on to bad investments longer than we should, because we feel far sharper pain from losing money than we do from gaining the exact same amount. — Anonymous

Too often we focus on the greater shcemes in life, like making money, or getting promoted at work, or starting a new relationship - and yea, of course, those things matter - but sometimes it's the tiny, gradual, stepping-stone victories that bring real joy and signify the positive changes in our life. — Kunal Nayyar

The real service to God is when it involves people in need — Sunday Adelaja

How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away. — Yuval Noah Harari