Rich But Unhappy Quotes & Sayings

Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it. — Oliver Goldsmith

But don't you want lots of money?"
"Beene, I spent many years working for the Belgians in the rubber plantation at Coquilhatville, and I saw rich men there. They were always unhappy and had very few children. — Barbara Kingsolver

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

A graceless, inexperienced preacher is one of the most unhappy creatures upon earth: and yet he is ordinarily very insensible of his unhappiness; for he has so many counters that seem like the gold of saving grace, and so many splendid stones that resemble Christian jewels, that he is seldom troubled with the thoughts of his poverty; but (Rev3:15) thinks he is "rich, and increased in goods, and stands in need of nothing, when he is poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked." He — Richard Baxter

Unhappy poor people at least have the fantasy that money will make them happy; unhappy rich people don't even have that. — Dennis Prager

Why had he wanted to be rich, or to feel rich? Was he an unhappy mouse before? Didn't he see the King himself often looking sad? Was anyone completely happy? — William Steig

The truth is Canada is a cloud-cuckoo-land, an insufferably rich country governed by idiots, its self-made problems offering comic relief to the ills of the real world out there, where famine and racial strife and vandals in office are the unhappy rule. — Mordecai Richler

It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy. — Thornton Wilder

But it is not the rich person only who is under the domination of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it. — George MacDonald

We have known for some time that the poor and ignored were the nonvoters, alienated from a political system they felt didn't care about them, and about which they could do little. Now alienation has spread upward into families above the poverty line. These are white workers, neither rich nor poor, but angry over economic insecurity, unhappy with their work, worried about their neighborhoods, hostile to government - combining elements of racism with elements of class consciousness, contempt for the lower classes along with distrust for the elite, and thus open to solutions from any direction, right or left. — Howard Zinn

There is much less envy of the rich by the poor than there is of the happy by the unhappy; by those who believe by those who don?t believe. — Dennis Prager

The rich are obscure to us, finding ways to be unhappy when all the normal causes of unhappiness are removed. — Salman Rushdie

The life of an unhappy rich person is poorer than a happy beggar. — Debasish Mridha

Augustus said. "You can't have this leg, and if you're thinking of overpowering me you have to calculate on losing about half the town. I can shoot straight when I'm drunk, too." "I only want to save your life," Dr. Mobley said, taking a drink from the first bottle before pouring Augustus a glassful. "It's my worry, mainly," Augustus said. "You stated your case, but the jury went against you. Jury of one. Did you pay the whore?" "I did," Dr. Mobley said. "Since you refuse company, you'll have to drink alone. I have to go deliver a child into this unhappy world." "It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times," Augustus said. — Larry McMurtry

Rich people are just people," said Mma Ramotswe. "I have not met a rich person yet who isn't just the same as us. Being happy or unhappy has nothing to do with being rich. — Alexander McCall Smith

I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous and very unhappy. — Brigitte Bardot

Loneliness is treated like the ultimate taboo; at the same time, it's regarded as a trifle. That to be a thirty-seven-year-old who has spent a decade without someone to hold her hand at the doctor's office is akin to being a thirteen-year-old sighing over a boy band.

Again, I know - 'single' is not a synonym for 'lonely.' I know there are many lonely married people, as well as lots of single people who have a rich network of deep social connections - friends, sisters, daughters, nephews, etc. - whose lives are as far from Heller's unhappy narrator as can be.

But for many of us, living alone in a society that is so rigorously constructed around couples and nuclear families is hard on the soul. — Sara Eckel

Here's the truth: It is not Grown to expect a relationship to provide what you are not committed to providing for yourself. The capacity for others to love you can never exceed the love you demonstrate for yourself. Furthermore, you don't attract what you want in relationships, but what you are. So if you want financial security in a relationship, you need to commit to providing that for yourself. If tender, loving treatment is what you desire, then you should be giving that to yourself as a single person. If you seek forgiveness, compassion and emotional safety in a relationship, you must be committed to requiring that of yourself in single life. If you want a relationship rich with fun, joy and adventure, then that is exactly the life you should be pursuing as a single person. On the other hand, if you are desperate and unhappy as a single person, you are neither qualified nor prepared for a healthy relationship and you will attract and choose anything but. — Zara D. Green

Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate. — Herodotus

We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor ... Millions will always remain poor. — Mahatma Gandhi

The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I would rather live a joyful simple life, doing what I love, than to be unhappy and rich. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What's the point of massive achievement if your life has no balance? And what's the point of winning the game if you never take the time to celebrate and appreciate the life you have? There's nothing worse than a rich person who's chronically angry or unhappy. — Anthony Robbins

Mexico: where life is cheap, death is rich, and the buzzards are never unhappy. — Edward Abbey

You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help. — Jean Kerr

Our lives are also measured in three dimensions: Spirit, mind, and body. However, the greatest of these is Spirit, because to refuse the Spirit is to choose death. "For example, the body of a man may be shackled and jailed. Still, his Spirit praises God continuously. Another one may be materially rich and free, but his oppressed Spirit curses his miserable existence. A child's mind may be humble, but glorious in love and faith, while a genius may be too proud to appreciate the humility and simplicity that fruitful faith requires. And regarding the body, even beautiful people are oftentimes unhappy and unfulfilled. It is the Spirit of Love that fulfills us. — Kenneth E. Nowell

I mean people, people don't get ,they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things, you know, and he's getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots. — Howard Warren Buffett

Woe to the generation of sons who find their censers empty of the rich incense of prayer, whose fathers have been too busy or too unbelieving to pray, and perils inexpressible and consequences untold are their unhappy heritage. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The inner speech, your thoughts, can cause you to be rich or poor, loved or unloved, happy or unhappy, attractive or unattractive, powerful or weak. — Ralph Charell

CHILDHOOD I That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt. At the border of the forest - dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare, - the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea. Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens, - young mothers and big sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy. What boredom, the hour of the "dear body" and "dear heart." II — Arthur Rimbaud

Being rich and miserable has got to be better than poor and unhappy. — Anne Robinson

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physiognomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clownmobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns ... Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. Bang! You're dead! — James Howard Kunstler

It is not true that there is dignity in all work. Some jobs are definitely better than others ... People who have good jobs are happy, rich, and well dressed. People who have bad jobs are unhappy, poor and use meat extenders. Those who seek dignity in the type of work that compels them to help hamburgers are certain to be disappointed. — Fran Lebowitz