Echoes
Seneca
65 AD
“It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”
❧
He is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.
If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.
He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.
He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.
I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. (15)
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.
Poverty is a bitter thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits—the pursuit of mere pleasure as a sufficient end in itself.
Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little.
With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow — I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.
In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.
Faith is the best wealth for a man in this world. Righteousness when well practised brings happiness. Truth is the sweetest of flavours. They say the life of one living by wisdom is the best.
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.
Let us become intimate with poverty, so that Fortune may not catch us off our guard. We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once learn how far poverty is from being a burden.
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced.
With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.
Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.