We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
To lese-majeste and contempt of court, we must add the crime of lese-million, that fearful indignity we visit on the rich when we expose the impotence of gold.
And money is not something to go mad about ... Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children.
Money alone is only a mean; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich man can go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to read nor intelligence to see.... The purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him ... he may live as blank a life as any tattered ditcher.
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
Is this money well spent? This is taxpayer money, it is going to be adding to the deficit short term and if we can't justify it, then we're not going to spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, just to make somebody happy, if it's not good for the economy.
So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.