That a Man ought to be sober in the enjoyment of Life

There is a measure in all things, and even in the enjoyment of pleasures we ought to maintain some sobriety, lest by too free a use of them we blunt our own capacity for them. The man who has taken everything freely has nothing left to look forward to. When familiarity has stripped the wonder from every experience, there remains only appetite without satisfaction — the most miserable of conditions, being hunger without the ability to be fed.

The great lovers of the table destroy their taste; the great lovers of wine destroy their palate; the man who has sought novelty in every bed has made himself incapable of being moved. The very instrument of pleasure is worn out by overuse. We ought, therefore, to hold back a little — not from poverty of spirit, not from fear, but from the sensible policy of the gardener who prunes the tree so that it may bear fruit for many seasons.

“We should ration ourselves in the use of pleasures, as we do in food, taking enough to satisfy, and not so much as to oppress.”

I have noticed in my own case that pleasures long deferred have a keenness that frequent pleasures do not. The wine drunk after a long thirst; the conversation after a long solitude; the return home after a long journey — these carry a quality that the same things in daily use cannot. Something in us requires the gap, the absence, the waiting, before the fullness of enjoyment becomes possible.

This is not an argument for the ascetic life. The ascetic condemns pleasure on principle; I merely recommend a certain economy in its use. Let the pleasures be real, be full, be engaged with honestly — but let them not be so constant that they lose their character as pleasures and become instead the grey wallpaper of a life that has forgotten how to be surprised.