“Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; what you do not want is dear at a farthing.”
As quoted by Seneca (Epistles, 94)
Original
Emas non quod opus est, sed quod necesse est. Quod non opus est, asse carum est.
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Cato the Elder 15
politician, writer and economist (0234-0149) -234–-149 BCRelated quotes

“Do you want to be what you are or do you want to be what continually changes what you are?”
2017 Maps of Meaning 11: The Flood and the Tower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4fjSrVCDvA
Maps of Meaning

“Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.”
Variant: well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.
Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.”
Variant: Do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do.

“What you want is what you cannot have. What you cannot have is what you want.”
Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1994)

“As you cannot do what you want,
Want what you can do”

15 November 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/136655692730863616
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy