Daniel monologue — The Fool: A Play in Four Acts

Are you? What is success? Money? Yes; that's what our civilization tells us. Money! But where has that brought us? Only to the elevation of the unfit ... the merely shrewd and predatory. All around us we see men of wealth who have nothing else ... neither health nor happiness nor love nor respect. Men who can get no joy out of books, or pictures, or music, or even themselves. Tired, worried men who are afraid to quit because they have no resource except to make money--money with which to buy vulgar excitement for their own debased souls. Why, Mr. Goodkind, I have an income that you wouldn't suggest to your bookkeeper, but I have peace, and health, and friends, and time to read, and think, and dream, and help. Which of us is the rich man?