"Some have too much, yet still do crave; I little have, and seek no more. They are but poor, though much they have, And I am rich with little store"
About this Quote
Greed looks especially ridiculous when it’s already full. Dyer’s lines sharpen that point into a neat moral blade: abundance doesn’t cure craving; it can actually train it. The opening contrast (“Some have too much, yet still do crave; I little have, and seek no more”) isn’t just a brag about simplicity. It’s an indictment of appetite as a self-renewing habit. The “too much” crowd is defined not by what they possess but by what they can’t stop wanting, while the speaker’s poverty is recoded as freedom: the refusal to keep reaching becomes a kind of sovereignty.
The subtext is quietly political and religious in the way Renaissance moral verse often is. In an England marked by sharp class stratification, enclosure, and the growing visibility of courtly display, “crave” reads like a social disease: a culture that turns status into a treadmill. Dyer’s speaker opts out. That opt-out carries Protestant-adjacent overtones of temperance and inward worth, where “store” (stock, property) is deliberately demoted. Richness is moved from the ledger to the conscience.
What makes the quote work is its rhetorical accounting trick. Dyer borrows the language of wealth only to flip its math: “poor” and “rich” become psychological states, not economic facts. The chiasmus-like structure (“much they have” / “little store”) tightens the argument into a proverb, the kind meant to travel by memory and sting by repetition. It’s less a pastoral fantasy than a critique of a society that confuses acquisition with arrival.
The subtext is quietly political and religious in the way Renaissance moral verse often is. In an England marked by sharp class stratification, enclosure, and the growing visibility of courtly display, “crave” reads like a social disease: a culture that turns status into a treadmill. Dyer’s speaker opts out. That opt-out carries Protestant-adjacent overtones of temperance and inward worth, where “store” (stock, property) is deliberately demoted. Richness is moved from the ledger to the conscience.
What makes the quote work is its rhetorical accounting trick. Dyer borrows the language of wealth only to flip its math: “poor” and “rich” become psychological states, not economic facts. The chiasmus-like structure (“much they have” / “little store”) tightens the argument into a proverb, the kind meant to travel by memory and sting by repetition. It’s less a pastoral fantasy than a critique of a society that confuses acquisition with arrival.
Quote Details
| Topic | Contentment |
|---|---|
| Source | Sir Edward Dyer, "My minde to me a kingdome is" (late 16th century), stanza containing lines beginning "Some have too much, yet still do crave; I little have, and seek no more." Commonly anthologized in collections of Elizabethan/Renaissance lyric poetry. |
More Quotes by Edward
Add to List
