All wealth is the product of labor.

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

earn what you can since everything's for sale

One pays dearly for any kind of mastery on earth, where perhaps one pays too dearly for everything; one is master of one's trade at the price of also being its victim.

Ah yes, jobs. Once upon a time, souls were traded for immortality or riches. Now we are bought and sold with the promise of jobs. The human spirit is devalued currency. How the devil must be laughing.

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make things cheap.

gambling our hard-earned money on labor, inventory, rent, marketing, etc., all with

Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain... The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself — ultimate cost for perfect value

And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said we ever sacrifice anything save what we know we can never attain, or what some secret wisdom tells us it would be uncomfortable or saddening to possess.

Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free; our mind, our soul, our body, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends. All these priceless possessions are free, but the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time.

One of the most expensive commodities a nation can have is a cheap labor force. From this a host of consequences leaped forth as inevitable. — If you get labor for almost nothing, you have no incentive to buy expensive tools and the quality of your product will lag behind that of nations who do use the best tools on the market. — If you keep your labor occupied on menial tasks that are best suited to machines, your work force never develops those skills that would earn you more income. — If you employ ten to do the work of one, none of the ten will work to maximum efficiency because each will realize that what he or she does isn’t significant. — If you don’t pay your labor good wages, how can they ever afford to buy what you make? You limit your potential market by 50 percent at least, and if every employer in the region pays the same low wages, your market can vanish altogether. — A nation’s wealth is generated when the money from wages is quickly spread around because this causes more goods to be produced, and real wealth consists in the making and interchange of goods.
And then I made the discovery: ‘Ricardo was wrong. There is no fixed quantum of money in the world, or in any nation. The rich man doesn’t suffer deprivation when labor gets a bigger share, for that larger amount means a bigger total for him.’” — Chapter VII, “Ideas”, page 257-258

The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion ... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself - ultimate cost for perfect value.

Riches, the dumb god that giv'st all men tongues, / That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things; / The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot, / Is made worth heaven!

God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.