Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.
VerifiedParerga and Paralipomena
Why This Matters
Read full quote →Schopenhauer catches something that simple greed-warnings miss: accumulation doesn't merely fail to satisfy, it *actively* corrupts satisfaction itself. Each acquisition rewires your baseline expectations upward, so the comfort that once felt luxurious becomes invisible. A person who buys their first expensive watch feels transformed; a collector with fifty watches experiences each new acquisition as a small disappointment. The trap isn't that money can't buy happiness—it's that money reshapes what you need in order to feel happy at all.