Vatican Saying 68

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Translation

Template:Vatican Saying 68

Analysis

This is the negative counterpart of Vatican Saying 25: nothing is ever enough for those who find what is already enough to be too little. The implied desideratum is again self-sufficiency, autarkeia, which in turn depends on oligarkeia, being able to feel perfectly satisfied with the bare essentials that provide for and safeguard the Epicurean "natural" life.

Those, however, who remain unsatisfied after they have satisfied the natural and necessary desires, run a very serious risk: there in no final limit of how much they may untimately need in order to be happy. No matter how wealthy, or famous, or powerful they may become, there is no threshold of happiness, whereupon they can rest satisfied with their achievements. Instead, such people struggle on, in relentless agitation, ever striving to acquire yet some more of what they crave. In the process, they forgo ataraxia, which is fundamentally the end-goal of a happy life.

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