Ambrose Bierce

Scriptures, n.: The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

Faith, n.: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

I owe much; I have nothing; the rest I leave to the poor.

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.

A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies.

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.

The impulse dances inside the debt.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Owing money has never concerned me so long as I know where it could be repaid.

Who goeth a borrowing. Goeth a sorrowing.

Debts are like children: the smaller they are the more noise they make.

Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open foes. The debt-habit is the twin brother of poverty.

There are but two ways of paying debt-increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.