I am reading through your letters not just once but maybe a hundred times. You can well imagine that yourself. After dinner I usually have nothing to do. I do not read books, I do not play cards, I do not go to the theatre, my only pleasure is my business[.]

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, letter to Salomon Mayer Rothschild, quoted in Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets: 1798–1848, London, p. 107