Frances E. Willard Quotes

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

If what the heart approves conforms to proper patterns, then even if one's desires are many, what harm would they be to good order?

It is easy enough to be moral after a good dinner beside a snug coal fire, and with our hearts well warmed with fine old port.

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.

I have to think of moderation, which is not a word that's in my vocabulary. But I try.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

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.

Fortunately, the Canadian people in all their habits, are essentially a temperate people.

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

A prince must, above all things, accustom himself to moderate his desires. For as he has the power of gratifying them, if he once gives way to them, he will run to the greatest excess, and, by destroying his subjects, will at last complete his own ruin. In order to form himself to this moderation, nothing is more proper, than to accustom himself to patience. This is the most necessary of all virtues for those, who are to command. A man must be patient to become master of himself and others.

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

We've led pretty wholesome lives. We haven't lived life to excess like so many groups have done.

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Start the practice of self-control with some penance; begin with fasting.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

I'm the worst ad anyone could possibly be for abstaining from anything.

Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason.

There is something good in men that really yearn for discipline.

To the totality of purposes of the perfect Law there belong the abandonment, depreciation, and restraint of desires in so far as possible.

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.