Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows and of lending existence to nothing. [ Burke ]

Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to commonsense, and in lending one's self to the universal delusion without becoming its dupe. [ Amiel ]

Happy the man who, remote from busy life, is content, like the primitive race of mortals, to plough his paternal lands with his own oxen, freed from all borrowing and lending. [ Horace ]

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]