Sublime

But there’s only one way to stay wealthy: some combination of frugality and paranoia.

Gift receivers… the adult children of the affluent feel that their parents’ wealth/capital is their income… income to be spent.

The trick that often goes overlooked—even by the wealthiest—is what we saw in chapter 10: realizing that you don’t need a specific reason to save.

(As his predecessor John Pierpont Morgan had said about a banker’s reputation at the Pujo hearings in front of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1912, “[It] is his most valuable possession; it is the result of years of faith and honorable dealing and, while it may be quickly lost, once lost cannot be restored for a long time, if ever.”)

If we knew our fellow men thoroughly we could select thirty per cent of them whose combined ability would equal that of all the rest. Life and history do precisely that, with a sublime injustice reminiscent of Calvin’s God.

a monopoly or near-monopoly on the market;

“If you don’t know who you are, Wall Street is an expensive place to find out.” — Adam Smith, The Money Game