In every case, agricultural as well as manufacturing profits are lowered bya rise in the price of raw produce, if it be accompanied bya rise of wages_ The natural tendency of profits istofall; for inthe progress of society and wealth, the additional quantity of food required is obtained by the sacrifice of more and more labour.

-Ricardo, David
  Principles of Political Economy andTaxation.

The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.

-Ricardo, David
  Principles of Political Economy andTaxation.

At last America is in my view; a dreary waste of white barren sand, and melancholy, nodding pines. In the course of many miles, no cheerful cottage has blest my eyes. All seems dreary, savage and desert; and was it for this such sums of money, such streams of British blood have been lavished away? Oh, thou dear land, how dearly hast thou purchased this habitation for bears and wolves. Dearly has it been purchased, and at a price far dearer still it will be kept. My heart dies within me, while I view it.

-Schaw,Janet   b.c.1730
c.1776  On her first sight of the country around Cape Fear. Journal of a Lady of Quality; BeingtheNarrative of aJourney from Scotland to theWest Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the years1774 to1776.

Thereal priceofeverything, whateverything reallycosts to themanwho wants to acquire it, isthetoil and trouble of acquiring it. Labour was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.5.

Icannot help itthat my paintings donot sell.Thetimewill come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint.

-van Gogh,Vincent
  Letter to his brotherTheo, 24 Oct.

All those men have their price.

-Walpole, Sir Robert, 1st Earl of Orford
Quoted inWilliam Coxe Memoirs of Sir RobertWalpole (1798).

Poor lawyers, like poor paintings, are dear at any price. 902

-Whistler,James (Abbott) McNeill
On the cost and quality of some of the lawyers he had hired. Quoted in ArthurJerome Eddy Recollections and Impressions of J.A.M.Whistler (1903).

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

-Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills
  Lord Darlington's definition of a cynic. LadyWinderemere's Fan, act 3.

One man's wage rise is another man's price increase.

-Wilson of Rievaulx, (James) Harold Wilson, Baron
  In the Observer,11 Jan.