Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness.Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery

[Credit is a system whereby] a person who can't pay, gets another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay.

Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.

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.

Business?! Mankind [should have been] my business. The common welfare [should have been] my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence, were [supposed to have been], all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!~~Jacob Marley’s ghost to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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.

[...] There are tales among us that you have sold yourself to the devil, and I know not what.''We all have, have we not?' returned the stranger, looking up. 'If we were fewer in number, perhaps he would give better wages.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.