"Worldly wealth is the Devil's bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches recede, in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase, as the moon, when she is fullest, is farthest from the sun"
About this Quote
Burton doesn’t merely warn that money can corrupt; he frames wealth as a trap engineered to feel like nourishment. Calling riches "the Devil's bait" is polemical shorthand from a Christian moral universe where temptation isn’t abstract weakness but an active, predatory force. The verb choice matters: minds "feed" on wealth. Greed isn’t a bad hobby, it’s a diet that reorganizes your inner life, training attention toward accumulation and away from satisfactions that can’t be stockpiled.
The line works because Burton couples theology with a cool, almost scientific metaphor: lunar geometry. The moon is most radiant when it’s farthest from the sun; fullness is literally a shadow-effect. He’s smuggling in a psychological claim that still reads contemporary: the glow of possessions is often borrowed light, a visible “success” produced by distance from the source that actually sustains you. Riches look like flourishing while functioning as separation.
Context sharpens the point. Burton, best known for The Anatomy of Melancholy, writes out of an early modern England where money, markets, and social mobility are accelerating, and older moral vocabularies are struggling to keep up. His subtext is anxiety about a society learning to measure worth numerically. The jab isn’t at comfort; it’s at the escalating logic of "stores increase" as a way of being. Happiness recedes "in proportion" - not because wealth is sinful by definition, but because obsession turns growth into gravity, pulling the self away from its center.
The line works because Burton couples theology with a cool, almost scientific metaphor: lunar geometry. The moon is most radiant when it’s farthest from the sun; fullness is literally a shadow-effect. He’s smuggling in a psychological claim that still reads contemporary: the glow of possessions is often borrowed light, a visible “success” produced by distance from the source that actually sustains you. Riches look like flourishing while functioning as separation.
Context sharpens the point. Burton, best known for The Anatomy of Melancholy, writes out of an early modern England where money, markets, and social mobility are accelerating, and older moral vocabularies are struggling to keep up. His subtext is anxiety about a society learning to measure worth numerically. The jab isn’t at comfort; it’s at the escalating logic of "stores increase" as a way of being. Happiness recedes "in proportion" - not because wealth is sinful by definition, but because obsession turns growth into gravity, pulling the self away from its center.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wealth |
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