Extended empire, like extended gold, exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor.—Johnson.
Possessions.—It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.—Shakespeare.
All comes from and will go to others.—George Herbert.
In life, as in chess, one's own pawns block one's way. A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.—Charles Buxton.
In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.—South.
As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.—Montaigne.
Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,—that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.—Johnson.
Posterity.—Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compass. Jewels are handed down from age to age, less portable valuables disappear.—Lord Stanley.
The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.—Colton.
Poverty.—Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want—the want of money.—Zimmerman.