1A fire in the hearth warms the house. The same fire loose in the thatch burns it down. It has not changed; only the hearth is gone. Measure is the hearth. It is not there to put out what burns in me. It is there to make it useful.
2An angry mind sees one door: strike. A calm mind looking at the same wrong sees six: wait, ask, warn, walk away, forgive, go to law. So anger is a Closing before it has moved a finger. It closes ways first in the one who is angry.
3Anger tells me it has come to serve justice. Watch what it does. It does not ask what happened. It does not ask what would mend things. It wants someone to hurt, and soon. Justice has patience, and anger has none, and that is how to tell the two apart.
4When the heat rises, do the slowest thing you can think of. Draw water. Count the roof beams. Walk to the gate and back. What must be said can be said in an hour, and will be said better. Nothing true goes stale in an hour.
5The hot word cannot be called back. I have said things in a breath that I spent years trying to unsay, and I never did. The other person forgave me, and remembered. A word like that is a nail in a board. I can pull the nail out, but the hole stays.
6Why am I gentlest with strangers and sharpest with those in my own house? Because the stranger may leave, and my own will stay. So I spend my worst on those who love me best, and I count on their love to cover the cost. That is how a thief reasons.
7Is there no right anger, then? When I see a child beaten, should I feel nothing? Feel it. That first heat is the Fire in me knowing a Closing when it sees one. But take from it only the message: this must stop. Then hand the work to a cool head. The heat has done its part. It is a good alarm bell, and I would not let it steer the cart.
8In anger I am easy to lead. Anyone who wants me to do a foolish thing has only to find the sore place and press it. Then I will do his work for him, and I will think it was my own idea.
9Much of my anger is tiredness wearing a mask. Much of the rest is hunger. Before I judge the whole world wicked, I should eat something and sleep.
10I am angriest at the faults in others that I have not forgiven in myself.
11A want is a guest, and I may feed it and enjoy its company. But some wants, once fed, send for their cousins. Then one day the house is full of them, and they have my chair, and I am carrying their plates.
12How do I know when a want has become my master? Try saying no to it for a day. If I can do it easily, we are friends. If I find a hundred clever reasons why today is not the day, then I have learned who gives the orders.
13Pleasure is salt. A meal without it is poor, and I am no enemy of salt. But nobody dines on a bowl of salt, and whoever tries is thirstier after.
14Wine, and the like. A cup opens the evening: tongues loosen, old friends laugh. The fifth cup closes it: I say what I do not mean, forget what I do, and tomorrow is spent before I get there. The first cup and the fifth are poured from one jar, and my whole skill lies in knowing which one I am holding.
15Eat like someone who means to work afterward.
16The hunger for praise is the hardest to see, because it dresses as the wish to do good. Here is the test. If the good deed were done by another, and done better, would I be glad? If not, it was never the deed I wanted.
17Comfort is pleasant, and I should take it gladly when it comes. But I notice that each comfort I grow used to becomes a thing I cannot do without, and so a new way of being afraid. The one who can only sleep on feathers has one more thing to dread than the one who can sleep on straw.
18Measure in speech. Before I speak, three gates. Is it true? Will it open anything? Must it be said by me, now? Most of my words fail the third gate, and the world would not be poorer for the lack of them.
19I talk most when I know least. I have noticed this, and I go on doing it. Notice it again.
20Haste is greed for time. I snatch at the hour as a glutton snatches at the dish, and get as little good of it. The work rushed is done twice. The meal rushed is not tasted. The child rushed learns that she is in the way.
21I see what he has and at once what I have turns grey. A minute ago this was a good coat. Nothing has happened to the coat. Envy has not given me his coat. It has only taken away mine.
22There is a want that looks like a duty: the want to know everyone's business. What she said, what he earns, why they quarrelled. It opens nothing. It only fills my head with other people's furniture until there is no room to turn.
23When I have bought the thing I longed for, how long does the gladness last? A week. Three days. Then it is one more thing to dust and guard. Remember the three days the next time longing tells me that this one, at last, is the thing that will make me whole.
24Desire for another person's body is a strong river. I do not pretend it is not there, and I do not curse it; half the world's joy flows from it. But a river needs banks. A promise I made is a bank. Another person's trust is a bank. When the river breaks them, it is not only my field that floods.
25Measure is not hatred of joy. I have known people who mistook the two. They ate without tasting and frowned at music, and they were proud of it. But a life with no gladness is not a well-ruled life. It is a cellar. To feast at a wedding, to laugh until it hurts, to lie in the sun: these too are done to the right measure, and for the feast the right measure is more.
26Too tight a rule on myself is its own kind of excess. The bowstring kept always taut goes slack when it is needed. Unstring it sometimes. Rest is not a fault I must excuse. It is part of the work.
27I am stern with myself, and that is right. But let me check that the sternness has not leaked. The one who never forgives himself a lapse soon cannot forgive his son one either.
28A boast is a debt. Now I must live up to it or be found out, and either way the day is no longer my own.
29Laughter, yes. But listen to what I laugh at. If it is always someone's fall, something in me is feeding on Closings.
30Go hungry on purpose now and then, for a morning. I do not mean it as a punishment. I mean to show the stomach that it is a counsellor and not the king. It is astonishing how loudly a thing can shout and how little happens when I do not obey.
31Money wants watching more than most wants, because it wears the face of all the others. It says: I am not a want, I am the means to every want. And so I can go on gathering it for a lifetime and never once be asked, "For what?"
32The last bite of a thing is never as good as the first. Stop one bite before you must. This is a small rule for the table and a large one for a life.
33The want of the moment shouts. The want of the whole life speaks low. I want the sweet thing, and I want to be well at sixty. I want to say the cutting word, and I want my daughter to come to me with her troubles. Measure is nothing more than this: to let the quiet want be heard over the loud one.
34I do not rule myself by force. That is a war, and in a war with myself, I lose whichever side wins. I rule by Seeing. When I truly see what the fifth cup does, I no longer want it so much. The fight is mostly a sign that I have not yet looked.
35What I do daily becomes a rut, and the cart runs in the rut with no steering. So choose the ruts. A bad habit is a road I built without meaning to, and a good one I have to build on purpose. Once built, it carries me on the days I have no strength to steer.
36If you slip, do not then throw the whole day after the slip. One broken egg is no reason to stamp on the basket.
37Who is rich? I once thought it was the one with the most. Then the one who wanted least. Now I think it is the one whose wants and whose good are the same thing. He is the only man I know who gets richer by getting what he wants.
38The body's wants are few and soon met: food, warmth, sleep, touch. It is the mind's wants that have no floor: to be first, to be envied, to be safe for ever. When a want will not be filled, ask which kind it is. If I pour bread into the second kind, I will be pouring all my life.
39Sleep to the measure. Too little, and I am a hasty judge by noon. Too much, and I have slept through a part of the only life there is.
40Sorrow needs Measure as well, and joy, and even zeal for the good. I have seen a man so on fire with the Ways of the Many that he scorched everyone near him. He left no way open for anyone to disagree.
41I waited, and the want passed. It did not pass because I am strong. It passed because wants are weather. This is a great secret and nobody believes it until they have tried. The craving that swears it will last for ever is usually gone before the kettle boils.
42Old habits do not die. They sleep. Do not sit down near them and say, "I am cured."
43The one who rules himself is not always pulling on the reins. Watch a good rider. The hands are quiet. The horse and the rider want the same road by now. The pulling comes at the beginning.
44Whatever I must have at once, I should look at twice.
45Why does self-rule belong to the Ways of the Many at all? It seems a private matter, a tidy house. But think. The one ruled by anger can be steered by anyone who knows how to anger him. The one ruled by a want can be bought by anyone who holds it. That person has one road, and others choose it. Only the one who has Measure can be trusted with anyone else's ways, for only that one still has all their own.
46And if I had no one to answer to, and no harm to fear, would I still keep to the measure? Yes. Not for any payment. I have been the other man, the one with the fifth cup and the hot word. I did not like his company.