Laudator Temporis Acti

Phaedrus 4.23.1 (tr. Ben Edwin Perry):

A man of learning always has riches within himself.

homo doctus in se semper divitias habet.

In a similar vein, [Menander], Monostichs 2:

A possession not to be taken away is education for mortals.

ἀναφαίρετον κτῆμ᾽ ἐστὶ παιδεία βροτοῖς.

On the other hand, one who has devoted his time and energy to the pursuit of learning often lacks what the world calls riches, as Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. 1, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, Subs. 15, testifies:

But our patrons of learning are so far now-a-days from respecting the muses, and giving that honour to scholars, or reward which they deserve, and are allowed by those indulgent privileges of many noble princes, that after all their pains taken in the universities, cost and charge, expenses, irksome hours, laborious tasks, wearisome days, dangers, hazards (barred interim from all pleasures which other men have, mewed up like hawks all their lives), if they chance to wade through them, they shall in the end be rejected, contemned, and which is their greatest misery, driven to their shifts, exposed to want, poverty, and beggary.

See also Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, to which is added Porsoniana (New York: D. Appleton and Company 1856), p. 300:

At the house of the same gentleman I introduced Cogan to Porson, saying, "This is Mr. Cogan, who is passionately fond of what you have devoted yourself to,—Greek."

Porson replied, "If Mr. Cogan is passionately fond of Greek, he must be content to dine on bread and cheese for the rest of his life."

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