Wallace Rice

1859–1939 · American poet, editor & translator; designer of the Chicago flag

Wallace deGroot Cecil Rice (1859–1939) was a Chicago writer, editor and translator who produced more than ninety books and, in 1917, designed the municipal flag of Chicago. His 1927 collection Pagan Pictures freely reworked the Greek Anthology; its poem “Moderation” is the earliest documented English source of the ‘moderate in moderation’ conceit. Whether Rice coined the exact popular wording or merely versified a quip already circulating is unresolved — but it plainly is not Socrates.

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“Be moderate in everything, including moderation”

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