Real Wealth

"Did you ever think the origin of the word avarice?" "No." "It comes, at least it seems to me to come, from the same root as the verb have. It is the desire to call things ours. We call the holding in the hand, or the house, or the pocket, or the power, [as] having:
but things so held cannot really be had; having is but an illusion in regard to things.
It is only what we can be with that we really possess--what is of our kind, from God to the lowest animal partaking of humanity.

• George MacDonald, "365 Readings of George MacDonald" by CS Lewis.