Wealth / riches
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 4 anchored passages
money · riches · abundance · gold and silver · possessions · wealth
in the texts
Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?
Material riches and possessions, treated throughout as morally neutral instruments whose value depends on the disposition of the soul that uses them.
Such a thing too is wealth—an instrument.
but the spurious rich man is the one rich after the flesh, who has transferred his life into outward possession—the possession that passes and perishes and belongs now to one and now to another, and in the end to no one anywhere.
Since some things are within the soul, and some without, and if the soul use them well these too seem good, but if ill, evil—the one who bids us alienate what we have, does He deprecate those things which, when removed, the passions still remain, or rather those things which, when removed, the possessions also become useful?
Letters to Lucilius
Money and material riches, the object of avarice critiqued at length
Money is possessed with greater torment than it is sought.
"The axle was of gold, the pole of gold, of gold the rim of the topmost wheel, and the row of spokes of silver.
We impose upon our own eyes, and when we have flooded our ceilings with gold, what else do we rejoice in but a lie?