I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wer — Moderation

"Be moderate, be moderate. Why tell you me of moderation? The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste, And violenteth in a sense as weak As that which causeth it: how can I moderate it?"

"Give me neither poverty nor riches."

"If some people asserted that the earth rotated from east to west and others that it rotated from west to east, there would always be a few well-meaning citizens to suggest that perhaps there was something to be said for both sides, and maybe it did a little of one and a little of the other; or that the truth probably lay between the extremes and perhaps it did not rotate at all."

"A formative experience of my life was a lesson that one can have too much of a good thing. I used to love rose- and violet-petal chocolate creams, and once bought a big bag of them to eat in the theater. I finished them before the curtain went up and sat through the play — Ibsen, I think it was — in a state of nausea. I expect that if I read too much Agatha Christie in succession, I should experience the literary equivalent of that sensation. Not too much of a good thing: there must be worse mottos for life."

"Essential to Santayanas position is the Greek ideal of the "life of reason," a conception of the good life as requiring a continual commitment to the pursuit of self-knowledge, discipline, and an unromantic determination to harmonize rather than indulge the passions. It is the ideal of or moderation venerated by classic philosophers like Aristotle and despised by modern ones like Bertrand Russell."

"Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum."