The wealth of both Indies seems in great part but an accessory to the command of the seas. Bacon.
The wealth of both the Indies cannot redeem one single opportunity which you have once let slip. Thomas à Kempis.
The wealth of the land / Comes from the forge and the smithy and mine, / From hammer and chisel, and wheel and band, / And the thinking brain and the skilful hand. Dr. Walter Smith.
The wealth we cannot wisely administer is an encumbrance. Goethe.
The weariest and most loathéd worldly life, / 45 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment / Can lay on nature, is a paradise / To what we fear of death. Meas. for Meas., iii. 1.
The wearisome is in permanence here. Carlyle at Linlathen, in Forfarshire.
The weary night o' care and grief / May hae a joyful morrow. Burns.
The web of this world is woven of necessity and contingency; the reason of man places itself between them, and knows how to rule them both. It treats the necessary as the ground of its existence; the contingent it knows how to direct, lead, and utilise; and it is only while reason stands firm and steadfast that man deserves to be called the god of the earth. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth to incline to find something arbitrary in what is necessary, who would fain ascribe a kind of reason to the contingent, which it were even a religion to follow; what is that but to disown one's own understanding, and to give loose reins to one's inclinations? We imagine it piety to saunter along (hinschlendern) without consideration, and to allow ourselves to be determined by agreeable accidents, and finally give to the results of such a vacillating life the name of Divine guidance. Goethe.
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues. All's Well, iv. 3.
The wedge will rend rocks; but its edge must be sharp and single; if it is double, the wedge is bruised in pieces, and will rend nothing. Carlyle.