Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 50.6 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 328 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. 41, pp. 627-628; tr. Edmund Hill):

Do you regard someone as rich who would need less if he had less? We see people, do we not, who were delighted with small profits when they only had a small amount of money. But once they begin to have plenty of what is genuinely gold and silver, but for all that is false riches, then offer them a small margin of profit, and now they turn it down. You imagine that they are now satisfied, but it is not true. Having more money, you see, does not close the jaws of avarice, but stretches them wider; instead of cooling greed, it makes it hotter. They spurn the cup, because they are thirsting for the river. So should we call them wealthier, then, or needier than ever, people who began by wishing to have something in order not to need it, but who now have more and more, in order not to need less?

Divitem tu putas, qui minus egeret, si minus haberet? Nam videmus quosdam cum haberent parvam pecuniam parvis lucris fuisse laetatos. Sed postea quam eis coepit abundare verum quidem corpus auri et argenti, sed tamen falsae divitiae, cum parva obtuleris, iam recusant. Credis eos iam esse satiatos, sed falsum est. Nam maior pecunia fauces avaritiae non claudit, sed extendit; non irrigat, sed accendit. Poculum respuunt, quia fluvium sitiunt. Utrum ergo ditior an egentior dicendus est, qui cum ideo voluit habere aliquid ne indigeret, ideo plus habet ne minus indigeat?