Life & Wisdom Quote by Edmund Waller

Austerity dressed up as grace: Waller’s line flatters the desire for comfort while scolding the appetite for excess. “Give us enough” sounds like a plea for basic provision, but the second clause tightens the moral screw. “With a sparing hand” doesn’t just ask for moderation; it insists that the act of giving itself be restrained, almost reluctant. The subtext is that abundance is dangerous even when it arrives as a gift. Plenty breeds softness, entitlement, and the social chaos of wanting more.

That tension fits Waller’s moment. A courtly poet moving through the upheavals of Civil War, Commonwealth, and Restoration, he writes in a culture where patronage, display, and survival were intertwined. To praise “enough” is to signal virtue; to praise spareness is to signal self-control and political prudence. In a world of favor and faction, asking for “enough” can read as strategic humility: the speaker claims to be above greed, which makes him sound trustworthy - and worth supporting.

The craftsmanship is in its balancing act. “Enough” is deliberately vague; it invites every reader to define their own threshold while pretending the threshold is objective. “Sparing hand” shifts the focus from the recipient’s needs to the giver’s discipline, turning economics into ethics. It’s a small line that performs a big cultural task: making inequality, limitation, and restraint feel not merely necessary, but elegant.