Lives of Virtue
Temper the desires for pleasure and delight.
Moderation is the cardinal virtue that regulates the desires for pleasure. Through the habit of moderation, reason restrains excessive desire and indulgence without rejecting the goodness of pleasant things. True moderation, then, is not simply the suppression of desire, but is a habit by which reason permeates desire itself, so that it may tend toward its proper end and contribute to human happiness. Taken in its most general sense, moderation refers to reason’s regulation of every human act of passion.