The pre-bite dopamine blast you're now getting is the promise of more bliss, and the post-bite drop in dopamine is, in a way, the breaking of the promise—or, at least, it's a kind of biochemical acknowledgment that there was some overpromising. To the extent that you bought the promise—anticipated greater pleasure than would be delivered by the consumption itself—you have been, if not deluded in the strong sense of that term, at least misled.

Buying something ultimately comes down to feeling good about the purchase.

to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure, has it, however he got it.

If you don't first handle fear and desire, and you get rich, you'll only be a highpay slave.

The goose that lays the golden eggs likes to lay where there are eggs already.

If success corrupts, I'm probably pretty corrupted by now.

Things, things, things. Always more things, and success is seen as the abundance of things.

Without preservation and cultivation of the spiritual, your material success will be as ashes in your mouths.

There was a spark inside that holiest of holy places that made people want to possess it, and what men yearn for they often destroy.

You may never get to that perfect world that you're waiting for where everything's going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.

Christians will want to be in the vanguard in favoring ways of life that decisively break with the exhausting and joyless frenzy of consumerism.

I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.