Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

'Tis not the eating, nor 'tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.

People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance.

I think I invented the phrase 'Don't overdo it.'

Take heed to your selves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness.

Try not to make every eating transgression at once. When I go out, I won't ever do both dessert and drinks. Just pick one.

restraint equals indulgence

Moderation is essential in all things, madam, but never in my life have I failed to beat a teetotaller.

Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.

Self-pity is like chocolate; as you get older, you can only afford a little bit.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.

Without asceticism, self-indulgence would be insignificant.

Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace. Leave gormandizing.

Let those who drink not, but austerely dine, dry up in law; the Muses smell of wine.

Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.

Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.

Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up dignity. In gluttony there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; 'tis not the eating, and 'tis not the drinking that must be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.

I drink exactly as much as I want, and one drink more.

Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.

Moderation is like sobriety: you would like to have some more, but are afraid of making yourself ill.

Sir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.

Better stop short than fill to the brim. Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt. Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.

Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet.

Intemperance is the plaque of sensuality, and temperance is not its bane but its seasoning.