Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Whenever I find something, I do not wait for you to say “halves!” I say it to myself. You ask what it is that I have found; open your pocket, it is sheer profit. I shall teach you how you can become rich most quickly. How greatly you desire to hear! and not without reason; I shall lead you to the greatest riches by a shortcut. Yet you will have need of a creditor; that you may do business, you must contract debt, but I do not want you to borrow through an intermediary, nor do I want brokers to bandy your name about.

​I shall give you that Cato-like creditor who is ready at hand, you will borrow from yourself. However little it is, it will be enough if, whatever is lacking, we seek it from ourselves. For it makes no difference, my Lucilius, whether you do not desire or whether you have. The main point in both is the same: you will not be tormented. Nor do I prescribe this, that you should deny anything to nature—she is obstinate, she cannot be conquered, she demands her own—but that whatever exceeds nature, you should know to be precarious, not necessary.

​I am hungry; I must eat. Whether this bread is common or of fine flour makes no difference to nature; she does not wish the stomach to be pleased, but to be filled. I am thirsty; whether this is water which I have drawn from the nearest pool, or that which I have shut up in much snow so that it might be cooled by an external cold, makes no difference to nature. She commands this one thing, that thirst be quenched; whether it be a golden cup, or one of crystal, or of murrine, or a Tiburtine bowl, or the hollow of the hand, makes no difference.

​Look to the end of all things, and you will dismiss superfluous things. Hunger calls me; let the hand be stretched out to whatever is nearest; hunger itself has recommended to me whatever I shall have grasped.

​A hungry man despises nothing. You ask, then, what it is that has pleased me? It seems to me excellently said: “The wise man is the most eager seeker of natural riches.” You say, “You present me with an empty dish. What is that? I had already prepared my money-bags. I was looking around to see into what sea I should cast myself to do business, what public revenue I should manage, what merchandise I should import. That is to deceive, to teach poverty when you promised riches.” Do you thus judge him poor to whom nothing is lacking? “By his own favor,” you say, “and that of his patience, not of fortune.” Is it for this reason, then, that you do not judge him rich, because his riches cannot fail? Do you prefer to have much or enough?

​He who has much desires more, which is proof that he does not yet have enough; he who has enough has attained the end, which never fell to the lot of the rich man. Or do you think these are not riches because no one has been proscribed on account of them? Because on account of them no son has administered poison to his father, no wife to her husband? Because they are safe in war? Because they are undisturbed in peace? Because it is neither dangerous to have them nor laborious to manage them?

”But he has too little who only does not freeze, does not hunger, does not thirst.” Jupiter has no more. What is enough is never too little, and what is not enough is never much. After Darius and the Indians, Alexander is poor. Am I lying? He seeks what he may make his own, he searches unknown seas, he sends new fleets into the ocean, and, so to speak, bursts through the very barriers of the world. What is enough for nature is not enough for man.