Avarice and Ambition Are Insatiable and Restless

The man that would be truly rich must not increase his fortune, but retrench his appetites: for riches are not only superfluous, but mean, and little more to the possessor than to the looker-on. What is the end of ambition and avarice, when at best we are but stewards of what we falsely call our own? All those things that we pursue with so much hazard and expense of blood, as well to keep as to get, for which we break faith and friendship, what are they but the mere deposita of Fortune? and not ours, but already inclining toward a new master. There is nothing our own but that which we give to ourselves, and of which we have a certain and an inexpugnable possession. Avarice is so insatiable, that it is not in the power of liberality to content it; and our desires are so boundless, that whatever we get is but in the way to getting more without end: and so long as we are solicitous for the increase of wealth, we lose the true use of it; and spend our time in putting out, calling in, and passing our accounts, without any substantial benefit, either to the world or to ourselves.

What is the difference betwixt old men and children? the one cries for nuts and apples, and the other for gold and silver: the one sets up courts of justice, hears and determines, acquits and condemns, in jest; the other in earnest: the one makes houses of clay, the other of marble: so that the works of old men are nothing in the world but the progress and improvement of children’s errors; and they are to be admonished and punished too like children, not in revenge for injuries received, but as a correction of injuries done, and to make them give over. There is some substance yet in gold and silver; but as to judgments and statutes, procuration and continuance-money, these are only the visions and dreams of avarice. Throw a crust of bread to a dog, he takes it open-mouthed, swallows it whole, and presently gapes for more: just so do we with the gifts of Fortune; down they go without chewing, and we are immediately ready for another chop. But what has avarice now to do with gold and silver, that is so much outdone by curiosities of a far greater value? Let us no longer complain that there was not a heavier load laid upon those precious metals, or that they were not buried deep enough, when we have found out ways by wax and parchments, and by bloody usurious contracts, to undo one another.