SO GOOD QUOTES

…or is it they who are sober and vigilant, and limit their eating by their need, and sail with a favorable breeze, and find hunger and thirst the best relish in their food and drink? For nothing is so conducive to enjoyment and health as gto be hungry and thirsty when one attacks the viands, and to identify satiety with the simple necessity of food, never overstepping the limits of this, nor imposing a load upon the body too great for its strength.

…For it is not the nature of the food, or of the drink, but the appetite of the eaters which is wont to produce the desire, and is capable of causing pleasure. Therefore also a certain wise man who had an accurate knowledge of all that concerned pleasure, and understood how to moralize about these things said “the fall soul mocketh at honeycombs:” showing that the conditions of pleasure consist not in the nature of the meal, but in the disposition of the eaters.
Therefore also the prophet recounting the wonders in Egypt and in the desert mentioned this in connection with the others “He satisfied them with honey out of the rock.” And yet nowhere does it appear that honey actually sprang forth for them out of the rock: what then is the meaning of the expression? Because the people being exhausted by much toil and long traveling, and distressed by great thirst rushed to the cool spring, their craving for drink serving as a relish, the writer wishing to describe the pleasures which they received from those fountains called the water honey, not meaning that the element was converted into honey, but that the pleasure received from the water rivaled the sweetness of honey, inasmuch as those who partook of it rushed to it in their eagerness to drink. Since then these things are so and no one can deny it, however stupid he may be: is it not perfectly plain that pure, undiluted, and lively pleasure is to be found at the tables of the poor? whereas at the tables of the rich there is discomfort, and disgust and defilement? as that wise man has said “even sweet things seem to be a vexation.”

A Treatise to Prove That No One Can Harm the Man Who Does Not Injure Himself
St. John Chrysostom