In the Imaginary Conversations, Aspasia asks Pericles: "Is there any station so happy as an uncontested place in a small community, where manners are simple, where wants are few, where respect is the tribute of probity, and love is the guerdon of beneficence?"
"From my tutor," said the good emperor Marcus Aurelius, "I learnt endurance of labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander."
"Ah!" exclaimed the Attic Philosopher, "if men but knew in what a small dwelling joy can live, and how little it costs to furnish it!... Does a man drink more when he drinks from a large glass? From whence comes that universal dread of mediocrity, the fruitful mother of peace and liberty? Ah! there is the evil which, above every other, it should be the aim of both public and private education to anticipate! If that were got rid of, what treasons would be spared, what baseness avoided, what a chain of excess and crime would be forever broken! We award the palm to charity, and to self-sacrifice: but, above all, let us award it to moderation, for it is the great social virtue. Even when it does not create the others, it stands instead of them." Socrates used to say that the man who ate with the greatest appetite had the least need of delicacies; and that he who drank with the greatest appetite was the least inclined to look for a draught which is not at hand; and that those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods. Milton says that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a golden bowl. "Have you never noticed," said Hiero, "all the multitudinous contrivances which are set before tyrants, acid, and harsh, and sour; and whatsoever else there can be of the same kind?" "To be sure I have," said Simonides; "and all these things appeared to me to be very contrary to the natural taste of any man." "And do you think," said Hiero, "that these dishes are anything else but the fancies of a diseased and vitiated taste; since those who eat with appetite, you well know, have no need of these contrivances and provocatives?" Michel Angelo seldom partook of the enjoyments of the table, and used to say, "However rich I may have been, I have always lived as a poor man." Said Seneca, "He that lives according to nature cannot be poor, and he that exceeds can never have enough." Epicurus said, "I feed sweetly upon bread and water, those sweet and easy provisions of the body, and I defy the pleasures of costly provisions." Cardinal Mancini staying once on a visit to Poussin till it was dark, the artist took the candle in his hand, lighted him down-stairs, and waited upon him to his coach. The prelate was sorry to see him do it himself, and could not help saying, "I very much pity you, Poussin, that you have not one servant." "And I pity you more, my lord," replied Poussin, "that you have so many." "No man needs to flatter," said Jeremy Taylor, "if he can live as nature did intend. He need not swell his accounts, and intricate his spirit with arts of subtlety and contrivance; he can be free from fears, and the chances of the world cannot concern him. All our trouble is from within us; and if a dish of lettuce and a clear fountain can cool all my heats, so that I shall have neither thirst nor pride, lust nor revenge, envy nor ambition, I am lodged in the bosom of felicity."