The Golden Sayings of Epictetus XCV

XCV

To you, all you have seems small: to me, all I have seems great. Your desire is insatiable, mine is satisfied. See children thrusting their hands into a narrow-necked jar, and striving to pull out the nuts and figs it contains: if they fill the hand, they cannot pull it out again, and then they fall to tears.— "Let go a few of them, and then you can draw out the rest!"— You, too, let your desire go! covet not many things, and you will obtain.