The thought for today is one which I discovered in Epicurus; for I am wont to cross over even into the enemy’s camp — not as a deserter, but as a scout. He says: “Contented poverty is an honorable estate.”
Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbor’s property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come?
Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and second, to have what is enough.
Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic
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