Moral Equipoise
It is true that many pious men in ages gone by have broken the universal rule to select the just mean in all actions of life; at times they went to extremes. Thus they fasted often, watched through the nights, abstained from flesh and wine, wore sackcloth, lived among the rocks, and wandered in the deserts. They did this, however, only when they considered it necessary to restore their disturbed moral equipoise; or to avoid, in the midst of men, temptations which at times were too strong for them. These abnegations were for them means to an end, and they forsook them as soon as that end was obtained.
Thoughtless men, however, regarded castigations as holy in themselves, and imitated them without thinking of the intentions of their examples. They thought thereby to reach perfection and to approach to God. The fools! as if God hated the body and took pleasure in its destruction. They did not consider how many sicknesses of soul their actions caused. They are to be compared to such as take dangerous medicines because they have seen that experienced physicians have saved many a one from death with them; so they ruin themselves. This is the meaning of the cry of the Prophet Jeremiah: “Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodgingplace of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them.”
—Moses Maimonides.
Temperance
Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as love or in faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in any way but as it ought.
—John Ruskin.
The Penalty of Untruth
We cannot command veracity at will; the power of seeing and reporting truly is a form of health that has to be distinctly guarded, and as an ancient rabbi has solemnly said, “The penalty of untruth is untruth.”
—George Eliot.
Alternate Reading: Philippians 3: 5-14.