Choose to Pass, Not to Indulge

If you are mission-oriented toward pleasure, you will never be satisfied. You will always want more, because what you got the last time will only temporarily placate your desires. Put away the immediate gratification and hold out for the greater reward that comes with waiting. The intoxication from the wine will wear off. The scent of that perfume will fade. There is a far better use of your wealth than on mere trifles.

Here’s what the Greek and Roman philosophers had to say about this:

The man who overcomes his desires is braver than he who overcomes his enemies. –Aristotle

But no man would ever repent of having refused any sensual pleasure. Pleasure then is neither good nor useful. –Marcus Aurelius

If you are ruled by you mind, you are a king, if by your body, a slave. –Cato

No one is free who is not master of himself. –Epictetus

To be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. –Plato

It is the sign of a great mind to prefer things in measure to things in excess. -Seneca