“Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.”
“You give me nothing during your life, but you promise to provide for me at your death. If you are not a fool, you know what I wish for!”
“People don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays; men have to work and women to marry for money. It's a dreadfully unjust world.”
“I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.”
“You may not be able to leave your children a great inheritance, but day by day, you may be weaving coats for them which they will wear for all eternity.”
“But thousands die without or this or that, die, and endow a college, or a cat: To some, indeed, Heaven grants the happier fate, Tenrich a bastard, or a son they hate.”
“The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to put me in your will and you will see that (as long as I live at least) you will never even catch cold.”
“There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.”
“One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.”
“In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.”