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Somebody says it over a second slice of cake, or a second drink, or a third hour of television. “Moderation in all things.” It is said kindly. It is said to permit, and it is said to warn. And it is said as though it were settled, because it sounds like scripture.
It is not in the Bible. No verse says “moderation in all things.” No verse says “everything in moderation,” or “all things in moderation” either. The saying is Greek, and it was already old by the time the New Testament was written.
The word “moderation” does appear in the King James Bible. Exactly once. And the verse it sits in is not about portions at all.
Is “Moderation in All Things” in the Bible?
No. Here is the whole picture, put as plainly as it can be.
Look for the word “moderation” in the King James Bible and you find one verse:
“Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.”
— Philippians 4:5 (KJV)
That is the only time the word appears anywhere in it. There is no “in all things” attached. And the Greek word Paul actually wrote there is epieikes (Strong’s G1933). Lexicons give its sense as gentle, mild, forbearing, fair, reasonable. Modern translations render it “gentleness,” “gentle spirit,” “graciousness,” “forbearance.”
It is a word about how you treat people. It is not a word about how much you eat or drink.
So the saying is not a misquote of a verse. It is a different idea, from a different place, that happened to borrow an English word on its way through.
Where “Moderation in All Things” Really Comes From
The idea is Greek, and it is genuinely ancient. That part of its reputation is earned.
Diogenes Laertius wrote a book of lives of the Greek philosophers. In Book I, section 63, he says Solon was the author of the saying “Nothing too much.” But in section 41, listing the sayings of the Seven Sages, he gives the same line to a different man: “Chilon of Lacedaemon’s words are true: Nothing too much; good comes from measure due.” And he notes that the old authorities report these sayings inconsistently.
Sit with that for a second. The earliest sources we have could not agree on which Greek said it. What they all agreed on is that it was Greek.
Hesiod, writing long before either of them, put it this way in his farming poem Works and Days: “Observe due measure: and proportion is best in all things.” That is Hugh G. Evelyn-White’s translation. There is the “in all things” at last — not in a Bible verse, but in a Greek poem about when to plough and when to sail.
The Roman comedy where most English speakers met it
In Latin the maxim is ne quid nimis. The place it turns up most famously is a stage play.
Terence’s comedy The Andrian opens with an old man, Simo, telling his freedman Sosia about his son. The young man did “what all young men, for the most part, do,” Simo says — “either to training horses or dogs for hunting, or to the philosophers; in not one of these did he engage in particular beyond the rest, and yet in all of them in a moderate degree.” And then: “I was pleased.”
Sosia agrees with him, and this is the line the whole world ended up quoting: “Not without reason; for this I deem in life to be especially advantageous; that one do nothing to excess.” (Henry Thomas Riley’s translation.) English quotation books have rendered that same Latin line as “moderation in all things.”
Here is the part worth knowing. Read one speech further and Simo says: “Meanwhile, three years ago, a certain woman from Andros removed hither into this neighborhood.” Everything that follows in the play turns on the son’s attachment to her. The maxim is not the conclusion of the story. It is the compliment paid right before the complication arrives.
So the pedigree is real and it is long. Moderation is sound practical wisdom, and the Greeks who said so were not fools. It simply is not scripture, and it never claimed to be.
What Philippians 4:5 Is Actually Asking For
Now read the one verse that has the word, with the verses on either side of it:
“Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”
— Philippians 4:4-6 (KJV)
Nothing there is about a meal. The subject is joy, how you come across to other people, and what to do with worry.
And look closely at the instruction itself: “be known unto all men.” Whatever this quality is, other people are meant to be able to see it.
How much food is on your plate is a private matter. Epieikes is not private. It shows up in how you speak to someone who was unfair to you. In whether you press an advantage you are fully entitled to press. In how hard you push when you happen to be in the right. That is the thing Paul wanted the neighbours in Philippi to be able to notice.
The English Bibles that came before the King James said it more bluntly than we do. William Tyndale, in 1534, translated the verse: “Let youre softenes be knowen vnto all men.” The Geneva Bible gave it as: “Let your patient minde be knowen vnto all men.”
Softness. A patient mind. Neither one has anything to do with portion size.
The closest the Bible comes to “temperate in all things”
There is one verse in the King James Bible that does put “in all things” right beside a word about restraint:
“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”
— 1 Corinthians 9:25 (KJV)
That sounds like our saying, finally. But look at who it is about. The verse before it says “they which run in a race.” This is an athlete in training, and the Greek word behind “is temperate” is a form of egkrateia, the New Testament’s word for self-control. (We took that word apart in Greek Word for Self-Control: What Does “Egkrateia” Really Mean?)
An athlete in training is not a picture of balance. He is a picture of the opposite. He gives up perfectly good things completely, for months, because he wants one prize more than he wants them.
So the single verse that sets “in all things” next to restraint is asking for something harder than moderation, not gentler. That is an odd foundation for a saying about having a little of everything.
Why the Difference Is Worth Knowing
“Moderation in all things” gets used in two opposite directions, sometimes at the same table.
One person reaches for it to allow something: a second helping, a late night, one more episode. Another person reaches for it to disapprove of something, as a polite way of saying you have had enough. “Moderation is key,” we say, and the conversation stops, because scripture has supposedly spoken.
Both uses assume the Bible handed down a rule about amounts. It did not. Which means that when the saying is used to shut someone down, it is borrowing an authority it was never given.
(If the question underneath this for you is really about drinking, that is a fair question and a separate one. We answered it properly in What Does the Bible Actually Say About Alcohol?)
And something real gets lost in the swap. A rule about amounts is easy to measure, and easy to apply to other people. Gentleness is neither. You cannot audit someone else’s forbearance from across the table. You can only be asked to practise your own, in the moments where being hard would be entirely justified.
That is a harder command than moderation. It is also a much better one to live next door to.
None of this makes anyone careless for believing the saying was in there. The word really is in the Bible. The saying really is wise. It travels with other proverbs, and most of us first heard it from someone we trusted. Of course it got filed under scripture. Almost everyone files it there, including people who have read Philippians many times.
So What Do You Do With It?
Keep the proverb if it helps you. It is good advice about cake and about screens and about most things. Just know whose advice it is — a Greek poet, a Roman playwright, and a handful of sages whose own biographers mixed them up.
And then there is the other thing, the one that really is in the book. Somebody is going to be unreasonable with you this week, and you will be entirely within your rights to be hard about it. That is where the actual verse lives.
Let your gentleness be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
A Short Prayer
God, I have used good advice as if it came from you, and I have used it on people. Forgive me for that. Where I am in the right this week, make me gentle anyway — gentle enough that somebody notices. And the thing I keep turning over at night, I am handing to you now instead of carrying it alone. Amen.
Discussion Question
Which saying have you always assumed was somewhere in the Bible? “Moderation in all things” catches almost everybody. Tell us the one that caught you in the comments — we read every one, and they often become the next article.
Share This
- “Moderation in all things” is not in the Bible. It is Greek — Hesiod wrote “proportion is best in all things,” and the Latin version is a punchline in a Roman comedy. I have been quoting a stage play for years.
- The word “moderation” shows up exactly once in the whole King James Bible: Philippians 4:5. And the Greek word behind it means gentleness, forbearance, being fair to people. Nothing to do with portion size. Tyndale translated it “softenes” in 1534.
- The only verse that actually says “temperate in all things” is about an athlete in training (1 Corinthians 9:25). And an athlete isn’t balanced. He gives things up completely to win one prize. That’s harder than moderation, not easier.
Questions and Answers
Is “moderation in all things” in the Bible?
No. “Moderation in all things” is not in the Bible, in the King James Version or any other. No verse contains the phrase, and no verse contains “everything in moderation” or “all things in moderation.” The saying comes from Greek and Roman sources, centuries before the New Testament. The word “moderation” does appear once in the King James Bible, at Philippians 4:5, but with no “in all things” attached and with a different meaning.
Who actually said “moderation in all things”?
“Moderation in all things” descends from the Greek maxim “Nothing too much.” Diogenes Laertius credits it to Solon in Book I, section 63 of his lives of the philosophers, and to Chilon of Lacedaemon in section 41, noting that the old sources disagree. Hesiod’s Works and Days has “Observe due measure: and proportion is best in all things” in Evelyn-White’s translation. The Latin form, ne quid nimis, is spoken by the character Sosia in the opening scene of Terence’s comedy The Andrian, and English translators have rendered that line as “moderation in all things.”
What does “moderation” mean in Philippians 4:5?
In Philippians 4:5, “Let your moderation be known unto all men,” the Greek word is epieikes (Strong’s G1933), which means gentle, mild, forbearing, fair and reasonable. It describes how you treat other people, especially when you would be within your rights to be hard on them. It is not about restraint in eating, drinking or spending. Modern translations usually render it “gentleness,” “gentle spirit” or “graciousness,” and William Tyndale’s 1534 English Bible translated it “softenes.”
Does the Bible say “everything in moderation”?
No, the Bible does not say “everything in moderation,” and it does not say “moderation is key.” Neither phrase appears in scripture. The Bible does speak about self-control, using the Greek word egkrateia, which is listed among the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:23 as “temperance” in the King James Version. Self-control and moderation are not the same idea: self-control is the power to govern yourself, which sometimes means having none of a thing rather than a little of it.
What is the closest Bible verse to “moderation in all things”?
The closest verse to “moderation in all things” is 1 Corinthians 9:25: “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.” It is the only place in the King James Bible that puts “in all things” beside a word for restraint. But the subject is an athlete training for a race, not a person balancing their habits, and an athlete’s discipline means giving good things up entirely to win one prize.
