Moderation Quotes

“Wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
So men against their will
Learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods.”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon

“Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.”
― William Blake

“Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.”
― Anne Sexton

“Love moderately. Long love doth so.
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

*Love each other in moderation. That is the key to long-lasting love. Too fast is as bad as too slow.*”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”
― Cicero

“Here's to responsibility, twice a week.',”
― Stephenie Meyer, The Twilight Saga

“Moderation in all things, especially moderation.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, "Sir, I am your most humble servant." You are not his most humble servant. You may say, "These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times." You don't mind the times ... You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Johnson, Vol 4

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
― Barry Goldwater

“Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance.”
― Epicurus

“Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.”
― William S. Burroughs, Ah Pook is Here! and Other Texts

“I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight...I agree.”
― Koren Zailckas, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

“If you must be indiscrete, be discrete in your indiscretion.”
― Mark Twain

“Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good...”
― Milan Kundera

“Once one becomes a man, he can and must make his own decisions. But I do offer warning. Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law

“O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Best of Myles

“I am a fan of overdoing something, but not running it into the ground. They are complete opposites with only a fine line separating them.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“If you really want to be different, you'd better keep quiet and be a good person on the inside.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“The man who shuns and fears everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger becomes foolhardy. Similarly the man who indulges in pleasure and refrains from none becomes licentious (akolastos); but if a man behaves like a boor (agroikos) and turns his back on every pleasure, he is a case of insensibility. Thus temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency and preserved by the mean.”
― Aristotle , The Nicomachean Ethics

“Don't go in and hide; don't come out and shine; stand stock-still in the middle.”
― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.”
― Laurence Sterne

“Moderates always seem to deal in hopes rather than in facts.”
― Ken Follett, Fall of Giants

“Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.”
― Samuel Butler

“Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.”
― Hippocrates, Aphorisms

“The ideas are louder when there are fewer of them.”
― David C. Day

“As the questions grow harder and more complicated, people yearn for simpler answers, one-sentence answers, answers that point unhesitatingly to a culprit who can be blamed for all our suffering, answers that promise that if we only eradicate the villains, all our troubles will vanish.”
― Amos Oz, שלום לקנאים

“My people!" he shouted in the stentorian voice. "I shall speak now of us! Who are we? We are an articulate people, yet a people of few words. We feel deeply, yet refrain from embarrassing displays of emotion. Though firm, we are never too firm, though we love fun, we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous, unless that is our intent. Our national coloration, though varied, is consistent. Everything about us is as it should be, for example, we can be excessive when excess is called for, and yet, even in our excess, we show good taste, although never is our taste so super-refined as to seem precious. Even the extent to which we are moderate is moderate, except when we have decided to be immoderately moderate, or even shockingly flamboyant, at which time our flamboyance is truly breathtaking in a really startling way, and when we decide to make mistakes, our mistakes are as big and grand and irrevocable as any nation's colossal errors, and when we decide to deny our mistakes, we sound just as if we are telling the truth, and when we decide to admit our errors, we do so in a way that is truly moving in its extreme frankness! Am I making sense? Am I saying this well?”
― George Saunders, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

“Fasting may not be as easy as feasting, but after a while it is not too different. Both are extremes. It is not hard to go the extreme way, but what is really difficult is neither to fast nor to feast, but to be moderate in everything we do.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The End of Sorrow

“It's simple, it's not that simple; or life is simple, but the things in it are not. When a man does not understand it, he tends to inflate it. When he does, he tends to deflate it. In the end, neither images are fully accurate.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy