A man who longs for nothing obviously has everything, and even more securely than a man who owns every possession. Maximus, Valerius....

For he has no time for great matters who concerns himself with petty ones; nor can he relieve many needs of others, who himself has many needs of his own. What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good. God alone is entirely exempt from all want: of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and most divine.

…and above all others because of God, who has made us for this end. Come, was there anybody that Diogenes did not love, a man who was so gentle and kind-hearted that he gladly took upon himself all those troubles and physical hardships for the sake of the common weal? But what was the manner of his loving? As became a servant of Zeus, caring for men indeed, but at the same time subject unto God. That is why for him alone the whole world, and no special place, was his fatherla

For this reason we ought not to cast out poverty, but only our judgement about poverty, and so we shall be serene.

I know a man older than myself who is now in charge of the grain supply at Rome. When he passed this place on his way back from exile, I recall what a tale he told as he inveighed against his former life, and announced for the future that, when he had returned to Rome, he would devote himself solely to spending the remainder of his life in peace and quiet, “for how little is yet left to me!” –And I told him, “You will not do it, but when once you have caught no more than a wh