And when this happens, they must needs impoverish those whom they leave.

How poor and cramped a thing, then, is riches, which more than one cannot possess as an unbroken whole, which falls not to any one man's lot without the impoverishment of everyone else! Or is it the glitter of gems that allures the eye?
Yet, how rarely excellent soever may be their splendour, remember the flashing light is in the jewels, not in the man.

Indeed, I greatly marvel at men's admiration of them; for what can rightly seem beautiful to a being endowed with life and reason, if it lack the movement and structure of life?
And although such things do in the end take on them more beauty from their Maker's care and their own brilliancy, still they in no wise merit your admiration since their excellence is set at a lower grade than your own.
'Does the beauty of the fields delight you?
Surely, yes; it is a beautiful part of a right beautiful whole.

Fitly indeed do we at times enjoy the serene calm of the sea, admire the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun.

Yet is any of these thy concern?
Dost thou venture to boast thyself of the beauty of any one of them?
Art _thou_ decked with spring's flowers?
is it _thy_ fertility that swelleth in the fruits of autumn?
Why art thou moved with empty transports?
why embracest thou an alien excellence as thine own?
Never will fortune make thine that which the nature of things has excluded from thy ownership.