Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Now, as for riches, if we consider it well, the commodity that we
take of it is not so great as our own foolish affection and fancy
maketh us imagine it. I deny not that it maketh us go much more gay
and glorious in sight, garnished in silk--but wool is almost as
warm! It maketh us have great plenty of many kinds of delicate and
delicious victuals, and thereby to make more excess--but less
exquisite and less superfluous fare, with fewer surfeits and fewer
fevers too, would be almost as wholesome! Then, the labour in
getting riches, the fear in keeping them, and the pain in parting
from them, do more than counterweight a great part of all the
pleasure and commodity that they bring.

Besides this, riches are the thing that taketh many times from its
master all his pleasure and his life, too. For many a man is slain
for his riches. And some keep their riches as a thing pleasant and
commodious for their life, take none other pleasure of it in all
their life than as though they bore the key of another man's
coffer. For they are content to live miserably in neediness all
their days, rather than to find it in their heart to diminish their
hoard, they have such a fancy to look thereon. Yea, and some men,
for fear lest thieves should steal it from them, are their own
thieves and steal it from themselves. For they dare not so much as
let it lie where they themselves may look on it, but put it in a
pot and hide it in the ground, and there let it lie safe till they
die--and sometimes seven years thereafter. And if the pot had been
stolen away from that place five years before the man's death, then
all the same five years he lived thereafter, thinking always that
his pot lay safe still, since he never occupied it afterward, what
had he been the poorer?

VINCENT: By my troth, uncle, not one penny, for aught that I
perceive.

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