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Socrates - Thomas Traherne - They are most happy and nearest the gods, that need nothing
Identifier
013680
Type of Spiritual Experience
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A description of the experience
Thomas Traherne – Centuries of Meditations
Socrates was wont to say:
‘They are most happy and nearest the gods that needed nothing’.
And coming once up into the exchange at Athens, where they that traded asked him, ‘what will you buy; what do you lack?’ After he had gravely walked up into the middle, spreading forth his hands and turning about, ‘Good gods’ said he ‘who would have thought there were so many things in the world which I do not want!’ And so left the place under the reproach of nature.
He was wont to say that ‘happiness consisted not in having many, but in needing the fewest things; for the gods needed nothing at all, and they were most like them that least needed.