In order to prove a friend to one’s guests, frugality must reign in one’s meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat.
ATTRIBUTION:
Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673), French comic playwright. Valère, in L’Avare (The Miser), act 3, sc. 1 (1669).
Valère seeks to please the miser. The expression “eat to live and not live to eat” comes from Cicero (Rhetoric ad Herennium), but is famous in the French tradition as a quote from l’Avare.
