Letter 108 — On the Approaches to Philosophy (§9)

“The poor lack much; the greedy man lacks all. A greedy man does good to none; he does Most evil to himself. At such verses as these, your meanest miser claps applause and rejoices to hear his own sins reviled. How much more do you think this holds true, when such things are uttered by a philosopher, when he introduces verses among his wholesome precepts, that he may thus make those verses sink more effectively into the mind of the neophyte!”