Our moral theorists seem never content with the normal. Why must it always be a contest between fornication, obesity and laziness, and celibacy, fasting and hard labor? – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a case like the present. – William Lloyd Garrison

He who makes a paradise of his bread makes a hell of his hunger. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin