A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Bertrand Russell

As to this, Gibbon remarks: “I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: ‘My vow of poverty has given me an hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.’ I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.”