To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
Interpretation
Desiring wealth may require a certain lack of wisdom or understanding about its true value.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote suggests an ironic observation about money and intelligence. It implies that the pursuit of wealth can lead individuals into foolishness, as they may focus solely on material gain without recognizing its potential pitfalls or the deeper values in life. The cleverness needed to accumulate wealth often comes at the expense of wisdom, as those who desire money may overlook more meaningful pursuits.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of wealth and happiness.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.
Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.
Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
Riches cover a multitude of woes.
I can focus on writing, or I can get lost in wonderfully fun but endless conversations and produce nothing new at all. I count on those people who enjoy my work to understand this.
I teach people that no matter what the situation is, no matter how chaotic, no matter how much drama is around you, you can heal by your presence if you just stay within your center.
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