October 3

Wealth never satisfies: your wants will always grow in relation to your wealth in such a way that the more wealth you accumulate, the less you will have to satisfy your wants.

1

It is difficult, if not impossible, to find a reasonable limit to our material desires. In truth, the contentment of this or that person in this regard depends not on an absolute, but on a purely relative measure, that is, on the relationship between his needs and his property. Thus, property means as little on its own as a numerator without a denominator. A person can be wholly satisfied not owning the things that he has not thought of owning and which are therefore superfluous to him; meanwhile another person, who has a hundred times more, is unhappy because he does not have something he wants.

— Schopenhauer

2

The one who has less than he wants should know that he has more than he deserves.

— Lichtenberg

3

It is not the one who has little who is poor, but the one who wants more.

— Seneca

4

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one’s self, so as to have somewhat left to give, instead of being always prompt to grab? It is more elegant to answer one’s own needs than to be richly served; inelegant perhaps it may look today, and to a few, but it is an elegance forever and to all.

— Emerson

5

Do not lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves do not break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

— Matthew 6:19–21

6

Accumulate for yourself the kind of wealth that the thieves cannot steal, that the strong dare not encroach on, and that will remain with you even after you die, never diminishing or decaying. This wealth is your soul.

— Hindu saying

There are two means of relieving the suffering of poverty: you can increase your wealth or you can decrease your wants. The latter is always in our power, the former is not.