Food for Thought

Your Dec. 9 editorial credits Benjamin Franklin with the adage “Eat to live and not live to eat.” Franklin was but the last to arrive at that sage philosophy. Prior to the 1733 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac, Moliere (1666) wrote, “One must eat to live and not live to eat.”

Of Socrates, circa 400 BC, Diogenes Laertius stated, “He used to say that other men lived to eat but that he ate to live.” Socrates was credited by Plutarch with the original axiom: “Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.” Which proves that good maxims never die, they just get plagiarized.

Michele Mooney

Van Nuys