“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

Context & Editorial Note

This saying circulates widely under Epictetus's name, and its sentiment is consistent with the Discourses as recorded by Arrian — but the exact wording has not been located in the surviving Greek text or in the standard eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English translations. It is recorded here as an attribution, not a verified quotation. The distinction matters to the archive's method: a sentence can carry a thinker's teaching faithfully and still not be his sentence.