lives in either desire or fear can never enjoy his possessions. He who
desires will also fear; and he who fears can never be a free man. The
wise man will not allow his desires to become tyrants over him. Money
will be his servant, not his master. He will attain to wealth by curbing
his wants. You will be monarch over broader realms by dominating your
spirit than by adding Libya to far-off Gades.

The poor man, in spite of poverty, may enjoy life more than the rich. It
is possible under a humble roof to excel in happiness kings and the
friends of kings. Wealth depends upon what men want, not upon what men
have. The more a man denies himself, the greater are the gifts of the
gods to him. One may hold riches in contempt, and thus be a more
splendid lord of wealth than the great landowner of Apulia. By
contracting his desires he may extend his revenues until they are more
than those of the gorgeous East. Many wants attend those who have many
ambitions. Happy is the man to whom God has given barely enough. Let him
to whom fate, fortune, or his own effort has given this enough, desire
no more. If the liquid stream of Fortune should gild him, it would make
his happiness nothing greater, because money cannot change his nature.
To the man who has good digestion and good lungs and is free from gout,
the riches of a king could add nothing. What difference does it make to
him who lives within the limits of nature whether he plow a hundred
acres or a thousand?

As with the passion of greed, so with anger, love, ambition for power,
and all the other forms of desire which lodge in the human heart. Make
them your slaves, or they will make you theirs. Like wrath, they are all
forms of madness. The man who becomes avaricious has thrown away the
armor of life, has abandoned the post of virtue. Once let a man submit
to desire of an unworthy kind, and he will find himself in the case of