Yquotes.com

 

Take your fill when the cask is first opened and when it is nearly spent, but midways be sparing: it is poor saving when you come to the lees. (translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)
--
lines 368-369.

 

Hesiod

» Hesiod - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

This quote is often directly attributed to Seneca, but he is referring to lines 368-369 of Works and Days by the Greek poet Hesiod : Take your fill when the cask is first opened and when it is nearly spent, but midways be sparing: it is poor saving when you come to the lees. (translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)

 

Seneca the Younger

 

At the beginning of a cask and at the end take your fill; in the middle be sparing.

 

Hesiod

 

The new thing, a great banality in white, off-white and poor-white, leaned up against the wall. “Interesting,” we said. “It’s poor,” Snow White said. “Poor, poor.” “Yes,” Paul said,” one of my poorer things I think.” “Not so poor of course as yesterday’s, poorer on the other hand than some,” she said. “Yes,” Paul said, “it has some of the qualities of poorness.” “Especially poor in the lower left-hand corner,” she said. “Yes,” Paul said, “I would go so far as to hurl it into the marketplace.” “They’re getting poorer,” she said. “Poorer and poorer,” Paul said with satisfaction, “descending to unexplored depths of poorness where no human intelligence has ever been.” ... “Sublimely poor,” she murmured. “Wallpaper,” he said.

 

Donald Barthelme

 

Evelyn Waugh, 1937. Quoted in Jeffrey M. Heath, The Picturesque Prison: Evelyn Waugh and His Writing, (1983), p.49.

 

Francisco Franco

 

The lady said, "It's no good trying to buy a paper here. That Sir William Beveridge is going to abolish want, so all the papers were sold out". Later that day or the next day I asked him to come to lunch. I was meeting with Evelyn Waugh, an old friend and famous writer. They did not get on at all well. Evelyn Waugh said to him at the end, "How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William?" He paused and said, "I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it". Evelyn Waugh said, "I get mine spreading alarm and despondency" — this was in the height of the war — "and I get more satisfaction than you do". So he did not meet with universal acclamation, but nearly everyone admired Beveridge at that time. He was a wonderful man.

 

Evelyn Waugh