Divitiæ sæculi sunt laquei diaboli: so writes Bernard; worldly wealth is the devil’s bait: and as the Moon, when she is fuller of light, is still farthest from the Sun, the more wealth they have, the farther they are commonly from God.

Robert Burton
Robert Burton (1577-1640) English scholar
Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, sec. 3, member 3 “Against Poverty and Want” (1621-1651)
    (Source)

The Latin is as translated; it's elsewhere also given as: "The riches of the world are the snares of the devil."

This overall passage, in later editions (which did away with much of Burton's Latin, or just left it in translation), reads:

Worldly wealth is the devil's bait: so writes Bernard; and as the Moon, when she is fuller of light, is still farthest from the Sun, the more wealth they have, the farther they are commonly from God.

Further edited and condensed editions in the 19th Century, shifts from wealth estranging people from God to wealth estranging people from happiness:

Worldly wealth, indeed, 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.

This last version, leaving out the "indeed," becomes commonly used in late 19th Century collections of quotations, and is most common (from that) in quotation collections today.

 
Added on 8-Jan-25 | Last updated 8-Jan-25
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