Letters 87.39

“The word ‘poverty’ is used to denote, not the possession of something, but the non-possession or, as the ancients have put it, deprivation, (for the Greeks use the phrase ‘by deprivation,’ meaning ‘negatively’). ‘Poverty’ states, not what a man has, but what he has not. Consequently there can be no fulness resulting from a multitude of voids; many positive things, and not many deficiencies, make up riches. You have,” says he, “a wrong notion of the meaning of what poverty is. For poverty does not mean the possession of little, but the non-possession of much; it is used, therefore, not of what a man has, but of what he lacks.”

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 87.39, translated by Richard Mott Gummere