For to start life with just as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one to live comfortably without having to work even if one has only just enough for oneself, not to speak of a family is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated; for it means exemption and immunity from that chronic disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a plague; it is emancipation from that forced labor which is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favorable fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be, in the proper sense of the word, sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and able to say every morning, This day is my own. And just for the same reason the difference between the man who has a hundred a year and the man who has a thousand, is infinitely smaller than the difference between the former and a man who has nothing at all.
The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - The Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer
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