Pay the belly only its due. Seneca, Epistles 2.21.9-11

Seneca advises Lucilius to pay his animal desires only what nature requires, not what civilization allows. Nature demands that we attend our desires, but civilization offers us more means of doing this than we can safely deploy. Because nature makes us hungry and civilization makes us rich, we can give ourselves chronic indigestion (and eventually diseases of excess, like gout or diabetes). But we don't have to. The key is to avoid eating everything we can, looking instead to eat only that which we need. Epicurus' dietary needs were minimal: his school met them with water and barley.

Pro eo libentius Epicuri egregia dicta commemoro, ut isti qui ad illa confugiunt spe mala inducti, qui velamentum ipsos vitiorum suorum habituros existimant, probent quocumque ierint honeste esse vivendum (†). Cum adieris eius hortulos et inscriptum hortulis HOSPES HIC BENE MANEBIS, HIC SVMMVM BONVM VOLVPTAS EST, paratus erit istius domicilii custos hospitalis, humanus, et te polenta excipiet et aquam quoque large ministrabit et dicet, ecquid bene acceptus es? Non irritant inquit hi hortuli famem sed exstinguunt, nec maiorem ipsis potionibus sitim faciunt, sed naturali et gratuito remedio sedant; in hac voluptate consenui. De his tecum desideriis loquor quae consolationem non recipiunt, quibus dandum est aliquid ut desinant. Nam de illis extraordinariis quae licet differre, licet castigare et opprimere, hoc unum commonefaciam: ista voluptas naturalis est, non necessaria. Huic nihil debes; si quid impendis, voluntarium est. Venter praecepta non audit: poscit, appellat. Non est tamen molestus creditor: parvo dimittitur, si modo das illi quod debes, non quod potes. Vale.

I am all the more eager to draw attention to the outstanding aphorisms of Epicurus so that those who flee to them in bad faith, looking for a mantle to cover their vices, may be obliged to acknowledge that they teach us to live virtuously. When you approach the philosopher's gardens, and the inscription over them—"Here at peace you'll take your rest / Our highest goal: to please the guest" (‡)—you shall find a friendly custodian there to greet you warmly. When he has done the honors of the place, offering you peeled barley and a generous helping of water, he shall ask you, "Have you been well received? Our gardens do not excite hunger, preferring to sate her, nor do they inspire drinkers with greater thirst: instead they quench it with a remedy both natural and free. This is the pleasure 'midst which I've grown old." Now we're talking about desires that cannot yield to consolation, that must be given something before they subside. About the other sort of desires—yearnings for novelty or titillation that we can defer, denounce, or deny—I will share just one observation: they are natural, not necessary. You owe them nothing; if you spend anything on them, it is by your own choice. The belly does not listen to precepts: it begs and demands. But it is not really a bad creditor: a little tax is enough to make it leave you in peace, if only you remember to pay what you owe, and not what your resources allow. Farewell.

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(†) This sentence and the first clause of the succeeding one are corrupt, but I am prepared to grant the MSS more authority than some (notably Muratus) would.

(‡) I render this motto freely as poetry not because it is such in Latin—though it might be; a better scholar could tell you—but because such is my fancy. The original, in any case, would have been Greek. I find no mention of it outside Seneca's epistle.