Conversations

Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician Moses Maimonides.

Moses Maimonides

Guide for the Perplexed,

 1190

It is the object of the perfect law to make man reject, despise, and reduce his desires as much as is in his power. He should give way to them only when absolutely necessary. It is well known that it is intemperance in eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse that people mostly rave and indulge in, and these very things counteract the ulterior perfection of man, impede at the same time the development of his first perfection, and generally disturb the social order of the country and the economy of the family. For by following entirely the guidance of lust, in the manner of fools, man loses his intellectual energy, injures his body, and perishes before his natural time. Sighs and cares multiply; there is an increase of envy, hatred, and warfare for the purpose of taking what another possesses. The cause of all this is the circumstance that the ignorant consider physical enjoyment as an object to be sought for its own sake. God in his wisdom has therefore given us such commandments as would counteract that object and prevent us altogether from directing our attention to it, and has debarred us from everything that leads only to excessive desire and lust.

Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician Moses Maimonides.

Frances Willard

An address,

 1893

There are two changeless sources of solid happiness: first, the belief in God, and second, the habit of hard work toward useful ends. The first affords a sunshiny mental atmosphere; the second keeps that ever-active engine, the brain, from working on itself. For it cannot be idle, and if its energies are not directed toward objective occupation, it will find employment in such dissection of its own powers as will weaken them, and tend toward morbid views and general bewilderment. The recoil of an engine upon itself, when that engine is the brain, means, in the last analysis, insanity. Looking out upon the world, we perceive that it is continually improving as to the comforts of life, the tools of mind and hand, the inventions that help in the annihilation of time and space, and the incentives to noble character.

I once asked the greatest of inventors, Thomas A. Edison, if he were a total abstainer, and when he told me that he was, I said, “May I inquire whether it was home influence that made you so?”—and he replied, “No, I think it was because I always felt that I had a better use for my head.” Who can measure the loss to the world if that wonderful instrument of thought that has given us so much of light and leading in the practical mechanism of life had become sodden with drink instead of electric with original ideas?