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If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.

— Democritus Freeman (1948)

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Variants

By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.

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Poverty

More quotes by Democritus

Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.

Freeman (1948)

No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.

Durant (1939)

Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Freeman (1948)

The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.

Freeman (1948)

Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man.

Freeman (1948)

All Democritus quotes →

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies.

Solomon

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

Leo Tolstoy

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Democritus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.