MODERATION.
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence.
Rut health consists with temperance alone.
And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thine own.
Essay on Man, Epistle IV. A. POPE.
These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume.
* * * * *
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. SHAKESPEARE.
They surfeited with honey; and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.
King Henry IV., Pt. I. Act iii. Sc2. SHAKESPEARE.
And for my means. I'll husband them so well
They shall go far with little.
Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5. SHAKESPEARE.
He that holds fast the golden mean,
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.
Translation of Horace, Bk. II. Ode X. W. COWPER.
Take this at least, this last advice, my son:
Keep a stiff rein, and move but gently on:
The coursers of themselves will run too fast,
Your art must be to moderate their haste.
Metamorphoses: Phaeton, Bk. II. OVID. Trans. of ADDISON.
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest.
King Lear, Act i. Sc. 4. SHAKESPEARE.