On wealth measured by omission
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
Thoreau inverts the usual sum. Wealth is not the count of what you have secured but the count of what you can leave untouched without loss — the argument you need not win, the opportunity you can decline, the news you can skip.
By that measure most acquisition makes a person poorer, because each new thing adds an item that must now be attended to. The rich man in this sense is the one with the shortest list of obligations disguised as interests.