Advice About Keeping Well (13)

ZEUXIPPUS. The very exact mode of living, exact to a hair’s breadth, to use the popular expression,[*] puts the body in a timorous and precarious state, and abridges the self-respect of the soul itself, so that it comes to look askance at every activity, and to no less a degree at spending any time or participating at all in pleasures or labours, and goes at no undertaking with readiness and confidence. A man ought to handle his body like the sail of a ship, and neither lower and reduce it much when no cloud is in sight, nor be slack and careless in managing it when he comes to suspect something is wrong, but he should rather ease the body off and lighten its load, as has already been said, and not wait for indigestions and diarrhoeas, nor heightened temperatures nor fits of drowsiness. And yet some people wait until a fever is already at their doors and then, being as excited as if a message or a summons to court had come, just manage to restrict themselves; whereas they ought, while these things are still afar off, to be cautious

Before the storm, as though along the strand The North wind blew.[*]