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

“The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.”
― Plato

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield
themselves up when taken little by little.”
― Plutarch

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“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