And a man must take with him to the house of death an
adamantine faith in this, that even
there he may be undazzled by riches and similar trumpery, and may not precipitate himself into
tyrannies and similar doings and so work many evils past cure and suffer
still greater himself, but may know how always to choose in such things the
life that is seated in the mean and shun the
excess in either direction, both in this world so far as may be and in all
the life to come; for this is the
greatest happiness for man.
-- Plato, Republic, 10.619a, b
