HomeSearchEssaysCollected
Nobody
@ephemeral

Today's News

What's happening

Who to follow

Clark Stanley
Clark Stanley
@RattlesnakeKing
Elliott Marsh
Elliott Marsh
@ElliottMarshX
Kai Okafor
Kai Okafor
@KaiOkaforManifest

Quote

Maimonides
Maimonides
Córdoba, Spain

By following entirely the guidance of lust, in the manner of fools, man loses his intellectual energy, injures his body, and perishes before his natural time; sighs and cares multiply; there is an increase of envy, hatred, and warfare, for the purpose of taking what another possesses. The cause of all this is the circumstance that the ignorant considers physical enjoyment as an object to be sought for its own sake. God in His wisdom has therefore given us such commandments as would counteract that object, and prevent us altogether from directing our attention to it, and has debarred us from everything that leads only to excessive desire and to lust. This is an important thing included in the objects of our Law.

Read the passage→The Guide for the Perplexed, Part III, Chapter 8
Locus

Córdoba, Spain

Tempus

More from Maimonides

1170

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

1198

The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.

1198

No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.

Similar Thoughts

Blaise PascalBlaise Pascal

There are some men who expose themselves to damnation so foolishly by avarice, by brutality, by debauches, by violence, by excesses, by blasphemies! ...it is always a great folly for a man to expose himself to damnation... He must despise desire and its kingdom, and aspire to that kingdom of love in which all the subjects breathe nothing but love, and desire nothing but the benefits of love.

Luigi CornaroLuigi Cornaro·1558

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.

Adam SmithAdam Smith·1759

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

See all