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Moderation is the avoidance of extremes

• Moderation: The avoidance of excess or extremes, especially in one’s behaviour or political opinions. Oxford Dictionary
• Moderation: The quality of doing something within reasonable limits. Cambridge Dictionary
• Moderation: The quality of being moderate; restraint; avoidance of extremes or excesses; temperance. Dictionary.com
• Moderation: Avoiding extremes of behavior or expression. Merriam Webster
• Balance,  Harmony,  Frugality,  Excess,  Waste,  Sustainability 

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Moderation is one of the great virtues  

• …there is astonishing convergence across the millennia and across cultures about virtue and strength. Confucius, Aristotle, Aquinas, the Bushido samurai code, the Bhagavad- Gita, and other venerable traditions disagree on the details, but all of these codes include six core virtues: Wisdom and knowledge, Courage, Love and humanity, Justice, Temperance and Spirituality. Happiness is these virtues in action. Martin Seligman
• Integrate these principles and habits deep within your nature; into your basic character: integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, simplicity, modesty. Stephen Covey
• Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all the virtues. Thomas Fuller
• To be a virtuous person is to display, by acts of will, all or at least most of the six ubiquitous virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.  Martin Seligman
• Untruthfulness, intemperance, irresponsibility, are all friends of failure, the common foe of dependability, which is the cardinal virtue in the lives of men of enduring worth. Bryant S. Hinckley
• Thirteen virtues necessary for true success: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. Benjamin Franklin
• Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative. Henry Kissinger
• Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Virtue,  Values to live by

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Moderation is about balance rather than excess  

• It’s all about balance. Balancing exercise, food, and life. No excesses. Helen M. Ryan
• Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide. Cicero
• All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much. George Harrison
• Balance,  Excess

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Moderation is about enough but no more  

• It is better to rise from life as from a banquet – neither thirsty nor drunken. Aristotle
• Enough is as good as a feast. English Proverb

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Moderation is about following the middle way between the extremes  

• Keep a mid-course between two extremes. Ovid
• You will go most safely in the middle. Ovid
• The intention of voluntary simplicity is not to dogmatically live with less. It’s a more demanding intention of living with balance. This is a middle way that moves between the extremes of poverty and indulgence. Duane Elgin
• Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much. Sir Joshua Reynolds
• The middle path is the way to wisdom. Rumi

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Some advocate moderation, others abstinence  

• Aim for moderation instead of abstinence.
• Complete abstention may be much easier than moderation. Marjorie Pay Hinckley
• Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. Saint Augustine
• I mean, moderation, not deprivation. That’s my new way of living. Carnie Wilson  
• Abstinence is easier than temperance. Seneca
• Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul. Frances E. Willard
• Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult. Samuel Johnson
• Abstinence is the surety of temperance. Plato

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Moderation brings happiness  

• Happiness is a way station between too much and too little. Channing Pollock
• Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health. Julia Child
• 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
• Moderation in people who are contented comes from that calm that good fortune lends to their spirit. Francois de la Rochefoucauld
• Out of moderation a pure happiness springs. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Happiness

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Moderation brings peace  

• In moderating, not in satisfying desires, lies peace. Reginald Heber
• Inner peace

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Moderation enhances pleasure and enjoyment  

• The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation. Martin Farquhar Tupper
• Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance. Epicurus
• Moderation is the key of lasting enjoyment. Hosea Ballou
• Pleasure,  Enjoyment

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Moderation preserves health and strength  

• Exercise and temperance can preserve something of our early strength even in old age. Cicero
• For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one’s strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases or preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues… This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended. Aristotle  
• Joy and temperance and repose slam the door on the doctor’s nose. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever. Samuel Smiles
• The ingredients of health and long life, are great temperance, open air, easy labor, and little care. Sir Philip Sidney
• The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a ‘sound mind in a sound body’. Jostein Gaarder
• Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a ‘sound mind in a sound body’. Jostein Gaarder
• Fortify yourself with moderation; for this is an impregnable fortress. Epictetus
• He who drinks a glass a day shall live to die another way. Stanlicus
• Health,  Strength

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Moderation is the best cosmetic  

• There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance. Arthur Helps
• Beauty

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Moderation is a form of wisdom  

• A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation. Moliere  
• Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance. Charles Caleb Colton
• The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom. Aristotle
• Perfect wisdom has four parts, namely wisdom, the principle of doing things aright; justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private; fortitude, the principle of not flying danger, but meeting it; and temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately. Plato
• Perfect good sense shuns all extremity, content to couple wisdom with sobriety. Moliere
• The middle path is the way to wisdom. Rumi
• Wisdom

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In excess, pleasures become punishments  

• So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments. Seneca
• Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains. Democritus
• If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please. Epictetus
• Even nectar is poison if taken to excess. Hindu Proverb
• They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. William Shakespeare

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Too much of even a good thing can be harmful

• Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess. Brandon Sanderson
• Follow the wisdom provided by nature. Everything in moderation – sunlight, water, nutrients. Too much of a good thing will topple your structure.  Vivian Elisabeth Glyck
• Candor and generosity, unless tempered by due moderation, leads to ruin. Tacitus  

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Eat with moderation  

• Eat with moderation what agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. Voltaire
• Food,  Diet

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Be moderate even in prosperity  

• The heart is great which shows moderation in the midst of prosperity. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune. Francois de La Rochefoucauld
• Abundance,  Prosperity

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Everything in moderation, including moderation  

• Everything is good in moderation. Even moderation. Iveta Cherneva
• Everything in moderation, and that includes moderation itself. Tadahiko Nagao
• Moderation in all things, especially moderation. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Even moderation ought not to be practiced to excess.
• Everything in moderation, including moderation. Buddhist Wisdom
• I believe in moderation in all things, including moderation. F. Carter
• Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance. Mark Twain

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Frugality is an important form of moderation  

• Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. Samuel Johnson
• He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little. Horace
• Frugality

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Temperance and labor make a great combination  

• Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Temperance and labor are the two best virtues. Labor whets the appetite, temperance curbs it.
• Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know. Charles Kingsley
• Temperance

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Moderation does have its detractors  

• Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. Oscar Wilde
• Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s dilemma. It’s neither doing nor not doing. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence- sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It’s for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation…is lukewarm tea, the devil’s own brew. Dan Millman
• 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
• There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. Alain de Botton
• A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. Thomas Paine  
• Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.   Somerset Maugham
• Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit. Benjamin Disraeli
• Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance. Charles Caleb Colton
• Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it. Francois de La Rochefoucauld  
• It’s a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation. Roberto Benigni
• Moderation: a median with no means, praised by those with no misfortunes, practiced by those with no merits. Bauvard
• That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this — that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution. Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

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• A teatotaller is someone who practices moderation to excess.  
• As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake. Mark Twain  
• There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation. John Ciardi
• Our moral theorists seem never content with the normal. Why must it always be a contest between fornication, obesity and laziness, and celibacy, fasting and hard labor?  Martin H. Fischer
• Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a case like the present. William Lloyd Garrison
• Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. Mark Twain
• Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, margarita in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO what a ride!
• Abstinence is a good thing but it should be practiced in moderation.  
• Glutton: A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.  
• I smoke in moderation only one cigar at a time.  Mark Twain
• My motto is: Live every day to the fullest – in moderation. Lindsay Lohan
• Take everything in moderation. Including moderation.

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