De Virtutibus

But if any persons, utterly disregarding the true wealth of nature, pursue instead the riches of vain opinions, relying on those riches which are blind instead of on those which are gifted with acute sight, and taking a guide for their road who who is himself crippled, such men must of necessity fall down.

We have then before now described that wealth which is the guard of the body, being the thing discovered by and bestowed on men by nature; but that more dignified and respectable kind, which belongs not to all men but to those who are themselves truly respectable and glorious, must now be spoken of; this kind of wealth wisdom furnishes by means of rational, and moral, and natural doctrines, and meditations from which the virtues are derived, which eradicate luxury from the soul, engendering in it a desire for temperance and frugality, in accordance with the resemblance to God at which it aims;

for God is a being who is in need of nothing, as there is nothing of which he is destitute, but as he is himself all-sufficient for himself. But the bad man is one of extravagant tastes, being always thirsting for what he has not got, because of his insatiable and unappeasable appetites which he fans and excites like fire, and kindles into a flame, directing them towards every kind of gain, whether great or small; but the virtuous man wants but little, being placed as it were on the borders between the immortal and the mortal nature, having wants indeed by reason of his body being mortal, and his freedom from extravagance because his soul is continually longing for immortality: