Seneca wrote this in the sixth section of Letter 2 of his Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium — in Latin, “non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.” The English everybody quotes is Richard Mott Gummere’s rendering for the Loeb Classical Library ↗, and it tracks the Latin closely. One caution: the sentence immediately before it is not Seneca’s — that one he credits to Epicurus.
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor” It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. — Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 2.6, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Loeb Classical Library, 1917). Verified: quotle.info
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Provenance
Where the line actually appears
Work
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius)
Passage
Letter 2, section 6 — “On Discursiveness in Reading”
Written
In the last two or three years of Seneca’s life; he died in AD 65
Translation
Richard Mott Gummere, Loeb Classical Library, volume I, 1917
The thought for to-day is one which I discovered in Epicurus; for I am wont to cross over even into the enemy’s camp,—not as a deserter, but as a scout. He says: ‘Contented poverty is an honourable estate.’ Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour’s property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come? Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.
Letter 2, §5–6
Gummere’s translation. Note the order of speakers: “Contented poverty is an honourable estate” is the maxim Seneca credits to Epicurus. The famous sentence is Seneca’s own reply to it.
The Latin is in place: The Latin Library’s text of Epistulae Morales I–XX ↗ carries “non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est” in Letter 2, one sentence after Epicurus’ “honesta res est laeta paupertas.”
The English wording belongs to a specific translator: Wikisource’s transcription of Letter 2 ↗ reproduces the sentence exactly as it is quoted today, in Richard Mott Gummere’s version. Its index page ↗ identifies that translation as Gummere’s for the Loeb Classical Library, published by Heinemann and Putnam in three volumes — 1917, 1920 and 1925.
The scan itself agrees: the Internet Archive’s copy of volume 1 ↗ is catalogued with a publication date of 1917, London: Heinemann, translated by Richard M. Gummere.
Wikiquote lists it among Seneca’s sourced lines ↗, pairing the English with the Latin and citing Letter II, line 6. Quote Investigator has no article on this quote — unsurprisingly, since it is not in dispute.
✓Public domain
Seneca’s Latin has been out of copyright for roughly two millennia, but that is not the whole question — a translation carries a term of its own. The English shown here is Richard Mott Gummere’s, published in volume I of the Loeb Classical Library edition in 1917 ↗, comfortably before the 1931 United States cutoff, so this wording is in the public domain too. A later twentieth-century translation of the same sentence would not be.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
It is real — but three things get muddled
This one survives the check: Seneca wrote it, and it is where everyone says it is. The confusion here is not about whether he said it, but about which sentence is his, whose English it is, and why almost nobody can tell you the source.
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Neighbouring sentenceEpicurus blended
Seneca opens the passage by quoting a rival school — “He says: ‘Contented poverty is an honourable estate’” — and only then adds the line about craving more, as his own gloss on it. The two sit back to back in Letter 2 ↗, which is how the credit gets blurred. The Epicurus maxim is the first sentence; the famous one is not.
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WordingRichard Mott Gummere, the translator translation
Seneca wrote nine Latin words. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor” is Gummere’s phrasing of them, and it is the phrasing that spread. Translate the same Latin afresh and you get something else — Sententiae Antiquae renders 2.6 ↗ as “It is not the one who has little, but the one who desires more, who is truly poor.”
✕
Citation“Seneca”, full stop unsourced
The quote circulates almost everywhere without a source. Goodreads’ entry ↗ credits a bare “— Seneca” with no work, letter, translator or edition, under the site’s own notice that its quotes are added by users and not verified. A genuine quote can still travel with a useless citation.
✓Seneca wrote it himself, in Epistulae Morales 2.6 ↗: non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.
Context
A Stoic raiding the enemy camp
Seneca had a habit he was slightly sheepish about: he read Epicurus — the Stoics’ philosophical opposition — and lifted the good bits. He even had a line ready for anyone who noticed. He crossed into the enemy’s camp, he said, not as a deserter but as a scout. Letter 2 is one of those raids, and this sentence is what he brought back.
The move is worth watching, because it is Seneca outdoing his source. Epicurus had said contented poverty is honourable; Seneca answers that if it is contented it is not poverty at all, and then redefines the word outright. Poor is not a quantity you have. It is a direction you are facing.
Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.
Why the English wording matters here
Almost every ancient quote you meet online is really a quotation of a translator. This one is unusually clean about it: the Latin runs to nine words, and Gummere’s 1917 Loeb version of them is the sentence that spread. That is why the source line on this page names the translation as well as the letter.
It also happens to be why the wording is free to reuse. A 1917 translation is in the public domain in the United States; a modern one, however elegant, is not.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
c. 4 BC – AD 65 · Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman & tutor to Nero
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger was a Stoic philosopher of ancient Rome who was also a working politician, a tragedian, and — awkwardly for a moralist on the subject of wealth — one of the richest men in the empire. He tutored the future emperor Nero and then advised him, an arrangement that ended with Nero ordering him to take his own life in AD 65. The Moral Letters to Lucilius, written in his last two or three years, are his most-read work and the source of most lines quoted under his name today.
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Cite this
Primary source
Seneca. Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Letter 2.6. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1. London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-not-the-man-who-has-too-little-but-the-man-who-craves/