From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk
To: An unnamed person
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore argues that wealth, rank, and cleverness are each worthless in the absence of genuine virtue.
Nothing, O admirable friend, is wealth — not even if it be great and flooding in from every direction. Nothing is rank — not even if it be royal. Nothing is cleverness — not even when it is adorned with eloquence. These are shells. They look like something; they weigh nothing.
Why do I say this? Because each of these things can be taken away in an afternoon by fortune, by death, by time. The man who has nothing but wealth and loses it has lost everything. The man who has virtue and loses his wealth has lost nothing he cannot survive. This is why I press you toward the one acquisition that neither thieves steal, nor floods wash away, nor kings confiscate — the life of virtue, which belongs to the one who has formed it and cannot be stripped from him by anything in this world.
Context:Isidore argues that wealth, rank, and cleverness are each worthless in the absence of genuine virtue.
Nothing, O admirable friend, is wealth — not even if it be great and flooding in from every direction. Nothing is rank — not even if it be royal. Nothing is cleverness — not even when it is adorned with eloquence. These are shells. They look like something; they weigh nothing.
Why do I say this? Because each of these things can be taken away in an afternoon by fortune, by death, by time. The man who has nothing but wealth and loses it has lost everything. The man who has virtue and loses his wealth has lost nothing he cannot survive. This is why I press you toward the one acquisition that neither thieves steal, nor floods wash away, nor kings confiscate — the life of virtue, which belongs to the one who has formed it and cannot be stripped from him by anything in this world.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.