The art of living easily as to money

The art of living easily as to money is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.

As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body.
- Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail, 1979