Quotable Quotes

Finance for the Arts in Canada incorporates the words of artists, with respect to money, business, life, learning and related matters. They’re intended for fun – to paraphrase The Mikado, “to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and uncongenial exposition!” (with apologies to W. S. Gilbert).

Following are some of Heather's favourites from the book. We would love to gather more – so please add your gems. We’ll post the best on this site.

Heather's Favourite Quotes

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."
- Woody Allen, film-maker.

"Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."
- Ambrose Bierce, writer (The Devil’s Dictionary).

"A country may have great corporations, but if it has no literature it is a country that has no soul. It is a shop keeper’s society."
- Morley Callaghan, writer and novelist.

"Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another; nor could it, nor can it, no or henceforth to the end of the world."
- Thomas Carlyle, essayist.

"The different branches of Arithmetic – Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision."
- Lewis Carroll, writer and mathematician (Alice in Wonderland).

"I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
- e. e. cummings, poet.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery."
- Charles Dickens, novelist (David Copperfield).

"Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil."
- Henry Fielding, writer.

"My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income."
- Errol Flynn, actor.

"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain."
- Robert Frost, poet.

"What we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love."
- Robert Graves, poet.

"If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay – in solid cash – the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners."
- Aldous Huxley, writer.

"All round numbers are false."
- Dr. Samuel Johnson, writer and lexicographer.

"There were warnings of apprehension from economists. There always are; apprehension is their business."
- Stephen Leacock, humorist and economist.

"There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting."
- David Letterman, comedian.

"Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five."
- W. Somerset Maugham, novelist.

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
- Dorothy Parker, writer.

"Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business."
- Tom Robbins, novelist.

"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."
- George Bernard Shaw, playwright.

"Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, for very long, burn."
- Igor Stravinsky, composer.

"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it."
- Frank Zappa, composer.

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"I've been rich and I've been poor; Believe me, honey, rich is better."
- Sophie Tucker, last of the red-hot mamas.

"From birth to 18 a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35, she needs good looks. From 35 to 55, good personality. From 55 on, she needs good cash. I'm saving my money."
- Sophie Tucker, last of the red-hot mamas.

"Having money in the bank is like having food in the fridge. It just feels good."
- Sandra Laronde, Artistic Director, Red Sky

"You know how much money I made this year? ... No? Neither do I. My accountant does. But I know how much he makes. Always know how much your accountant makes."
- Daniel Brooks, playwright, director, actor, teacher (Insomnia)