"Enough is as good as a feast" has become my favorite proverb. Obviously, it's a warning against consumerism, materialism, the excesses of capitalist acquisitiveness. Water in a jelly glass, it says, is as good as wine in crystal. As they used to gloss the proverb, no "avaricious scraping together that knows no bounds."
But for a fully "mature" guy like me, the proverb carries not only a figurative but a literal warning, i.e., don't eat too much. Enough is as good as a feast if a feast makes your stomach hurt, makes you heavy-lidded and passive, and if you feel a heck of a lot better when you stop eating before you reach satiety.
I can remember, as an adolescent, eating three large, overstuffed hamburgers, the roll overflowing with tomatoes, onions, relish, ketchup, etc. Along with a bottomless bowl of fries. And craving more. Then as a young man, a good portion was two hamburgers. Nowadays, I take a half or split one with a friend. Hold the fries.
When my grandmother prepared those glorious blintzes of my youth, eight was my number. Now my number is -- one. And I feel the better for it.
Digestion is slower and, I suppose, less efficient. And then there's the embarrassing fact that hamburgers and blintzes and everything else goes right to the enlarged belly, the "front porch."
So here's a proverb for this latter age: "enough is better than a feast." Much.
By the way, I first encountered the proverb, believe it or not, as the title to William Wager's 1581 morality play of the same name. And then in Latin in Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost, where, Sir Nathaniel and the pedant Holofernes come on stage having just completed, ahem, dinner. "Holofernes: 'Satis quod sufficit.'" Perhaps Holofernes paraphrases and simplifies Horace:
Multa petentibus
Desunt multa.
Bene est, cui deus obtulit
Parca, quod satis est manu.
Desunt multa.
Bene est, cui deus obtulit
Parca, quod satis est manu.
(Those who seek for much are left in want of much. Happy is he to whom God has given, with sparing hand, as much as is enough.)
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