For greed all nature is too little.

This line is attributed to Seneca in the context of his Stoic moral teaching, where he repeatedly contrasts natural sufficiency with the boundlessness of vice. In Seneca’s ethical writings (especially the moral essays and letters), greed (avaritia) is treated as a self-defeating passion: it expands desire beyond any attainable limit and makes the whole world seem insufficient. The sentiment fits Seneca’s broader Roman-imperial milieu, in which vast wealth, luxury consumption, and political power could be amassed, yet were seen by Stoics as intensifying anxiety rather than securing contentment. The remark functions as a compact maxim warning that acquisitiveness is insatiable by nature.

Seneca contrasts the Stoic ideal of sufficiency with the self-defeating logic of greed. Greed is not merely wanting “more,” but a disposition that makes any amount inadequate; even the whole of nature cannot satisfy it because its hunger expands with every acquisition. The line implies that the problem is internal—an untrained desire—rather than external scarcity. In Stoic terms, wealth and possessions are “indifferents”: they can be used well or badly, but they do not secure tranquility. The quote therefore functions as a moral diagnosis and a warning: without limits set by reason, appetite turns the world itself into “too little.”