The Jewish Wisdom Database

We should be grateful to those we profit from.

Cast no stone into the well that gives you water!

A table spread for the poor is an altar for the rich.

A servant whose master has no control over him cannot be called one.

Better is he who gives little to charity---from money honestly earned, than he who gives much---from money acquired by fraud.

Three possessions should you prize: a field, a friend, and a book.

Don't open a shop unless you know how to smile.

False scales are an abomination to the Lord; but a just weight is His delight.

It is better to eat herbs and fear no creditors, than eat meat and have to hide from them.

The greatest misers with money are the biggest spendthrifts with desires.

Our sages recommended that a father should spend less than his means on food, up to his means on dress, and beyond his means for his wife and children.

No labor, however humble, dishonors a man.

Whoever does no work will suffer all his life.

If a man does not plow in the summer, what will he eat in the winter?

Men worry over the loss of their possessions, not over the loss of their years---which never return.

Put all other sufferings in one side of the scale, and poverty in the other, and poverty would be heavier.

It is imperative that most men work in [physically] productive occupations, so that the few who devote themselves entirely to learning may have their wants provided; in this way, the human race goes on, and knowledge is enriched.

A man who does not own a piece of land is not a complete [secure] man.

The sleeping cat doesn't catch a rat.

A lack of accomplishment is the greatest suffering.

People say, 'Time is money' but I say 'Money is time,' for every luxury costs so many precious hours of your life.

Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.

Poverty in a home is worse than fifty plagues.

Always keep some cash in hand!

Money is a good and handsome thing, it is men who have spoilt it.