Aristotle Temperance Quotes & Sayings

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures. — Aristotle.

Wisdom or intelligence and prudence are intellectual, liberality and temperance are moral virtues. — Aristotle.

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 and 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.

Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean. — Aristotle.

The man who shuns and fears everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger becomes foolhardy. Similarly the man who indulges in pleasure and refrains from none becomes licentious (akolastos); but if a man behaves like a boor (agroikos) and turns his back on every pleasure, he is a case of insensibility. Thus temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency and preserved by the mean. — Aristotle.

All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful. — Aristotle.

Music imitates (represents) the passions or states of the soul, such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites. — Aristotle.