A miser had accumulated five hundred thousand dinars and looked forward to a year
of pleasant living before he made up his mind how best to invest his money, when
suddenly the Angel of Death appeared before him to take his life away.
The man begged and pleaded and used a thousand arguments to be allowed to live a
little longer, but the Angel was obdurate. “Give me three days of life and I shall
give you half my fortune,” the man pleaded. The Angel wouldn’t hear of it and
began to tug at him, “Give me just one day, I beg of you, and you can have
everything I accumulated through so much sweat and toil.” The Angel was adamant
still.
He was able to wring just one little concession from the Angel-a few moments in
which to write down this note: “Oh you, whoever you are that happen to find this
note, if you have enough to live on, don’t waste your life accumulating fortunes.
Live! My five hundred thousand dinars could not buy me a single hour of life!”
When millionaires die and people ask, “How much did they leave?” the answer is, of
course, “Everything.”
And sometimes. “They didn’t leave it. They were taken away from it.”
Source: The prayer of the frog, Part 2
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