Echoes

The food which a temperate man leaves upon his plate is more beneficial than that which a glutton eats.

An immoderate diet is unhealthy, but a temperate one preserves strength.

I eat only what is enough to sustain my life. My food is bread, soup, an egg, and a little meat. And the amount I eat is no more than my body can easily digest.

To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.

One should not eat unless one is hungry, nor drink unless one is thirsty.

Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

A person should not eat until his stomach is full. Rather, he should eat until he has consumed approximately three quarters of his fill.

Those who are slaves to their appetites cannot preserve their reason, their memory, or their senses in their full vigour; for a full belly does not produce a fine mind.

Abstinence is the nurse of the soul.

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

Excessive eating is like a deadly poison to the body and is a principal cause of all illness.

The stomach is not to be loaded, for there is nothing so hostile to thought as a full belly.

It is far from easy to determine whether Nature has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided.

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Resolve your mental energy into abstraction, your physical energy into inaction. Allow yourself to fall in with the natural order of phenomena, without admitting the element of self,—and the empire will be governed.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

It is better to be alone than in bad company.