#temperance

Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought round to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation.

He walks about with caution, like sick men, fearful of disturbing anything newly formed, until it attains proper stability.

If you exceed this, you must inevitably be carried forward to the precipice: just as in the case of a shoe, if you go beyond its fitness to the foot, it comes first to be gilded, then purple, and then studded with jewels.

Other men live to eat, while I eat only to live.

Know thyself and be temperate—these two injunctions are in truth one and the same.

May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he alone can bear and carry.

Temperance is the health of the soul; without it, all other virtues are as water poured into a broken sieve.

A life of mere sensual indulgence makes human beings slavish in their tastes, preferring the life of grazing cattle.

Temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.

Self-indulgence is justly censured, because it belongs to us not as human beings, but as animals.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Pushing against a silk curtain only exhausts the fist.

Water that is pure to an extreme harbors no fish; a mind that is excessively demanding harbors no friends.

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

Misfortune enters through the mouth; disease enters through the mouth.

Control your temper in the early morning, and the entire day will flow like a peaceful river.

Greed destroys every noble virtue, as an untamed forest fire consumes dry grass.

Nothing in excess; the golden middle path is the sanctuary of virtue.

Anger is a brief madness; rule your passion or it will rule you.

A quiet mouth is a sweet mouth; the tongue does not wound when the mind is at peace.

The frog does not drink up the entire pond in which it makes its home.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.