Quotations about Moderation and Balance

It is better to rise from life as from a banquet - neither thirsty nor drunken. ~Aristotle


I soon found out you can't change the world. The best you can do is to learn to live with it. ~Henry Miller


My good friends, while I do most earnestly recommend you to take care of your health and safety, as things most precious to us, I would not have that care degenerate into an effeminate and over-curious attention, which is always disgraceful to a man's self, and often troublesome to others. ~Edmund Burke


No matter what happens... somebody will find a way to take it too seriously. ~Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"


From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. ~Samuel Butler, Note-Books, 1912


Enough is as good as a feast. ~English Proverb


We may outrun
By violent swiftness
And lose by over-running.
~William Shakespeare


The most pleasant and useful persons are those who leave some of the problems of the universe for God to worry about. ~Don Marquis


The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab


He who makes a paradise of his bread makes a hell of his hunger. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Even nectar is poison if taken to excess. ~Hindu Proverb


To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together... humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self. ~William Wordsworth


Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance. ~Epicurus


They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. ~William Shakespeare


To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short. ~Confucius, Analects


Everything in moderation, including moderation. ~Author Unknown


Our moral theorists seem never content with the normal. Why must it always be a contest between fornication, obesity and laziness, and celibacy, fasting and hard labor? ~Martin H. Fischer


Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring. ~Edward Gorey


We find our energies are actually cramped when we are overanxious to succeed. ~Michel de Montaigne