SO GOOD QUOTES

Hence, to be purified from all these is most difficult, and requires a great contest, and we must bestow much labour both by night and by day to be liberated from an attention to them, and this, because we are necessarily complicated with sense. Whence, also, as much as possible, we should withdraw ourselves from those places in which we may, though unwillingly, meet with this hostile crowd. From experience, also, we should avoid a contest with it, and even a victory over it, and the want of exercise from inexperience.

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He also adds, that this philosopher does not even dream of betaking himself to banquets. Much less, therefore, would he be indignant, if deprived of broth, or pieces of flesh; nor, in short, will he admit things of this kind. And will he not rather consider the abstinence from all these as trifling, and a thing of no consequence, but the assumption of them to be a thing of great importance and noxious? For since there are two paradigms in the order of things, one of a divine nature, which is most happy, the other of that which is destitute of divinity, and which is most miserable ¹⁶; the Coryphaean philosopher will assimilate himself to the one, but will render himself dissimilar to the other, and will lead a life conformable to the paradigm to which he is assimilated, viz. a life satisfied with slender food, and sufficient to itself, and in the smallest degree replete with mortal natures.

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So that only granting to nature what is necessary, and this of a light quality, and through more slender food, he will reject whatever exceeds this, as only contributing to pleasure.

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For, let any man show us who endeavours as much as possible to live according to intellect, and not to be attracted by the passions of the body, that |37 animal food is more easily procured than the food from fruits and herbs; or that the preparation of the former is more simple than that of the latter, and, in short, that it does not require cooks, but, when compared with inanimate nutriment, is unattended by pleasure, is lighter in concoction, and is more rapidly digested, excites in a less degree the desires, and contributes less to the strength of the body than a vegetable diet.

—Porphyry, On abstinence from animal food (1823) Book 1. Pp.11-44