Quotes and Sayings about Excess
"Excessive fear is always powerless."
- Aeschylus
(Related: Fear)
"I used to suffer from excessive pride. Well, I got over that one."
- Francesca Annis
(Related: Pride)
"What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating."
- Jean Anouilh
(Related: Excess, Fun, Poor)
"Quarrels often arise in marriages when the bridal gifts are excessive."
- Antisthenes
(Related: Gifts, Quarrels)
"After an unremitting and severe labour of two days, we returned to our old encampment with the loss of some of my horses, and my men excessively fatigued."
- William Henry Ashley
(Related: Men, Horses, Loss, Old)
"Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim."
- Jane Austen
(Related: Dress)
"The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall."
- Francis Bacon
(Related: Men, Power, Knowledge, Angels, Desire)
"Peace congresses often start by dealing with some of the less important questions in excessive detail, so at the end there is no time to discuss the most important problems."
- Fredrik Bajer
(Related: Peace, Time, Detail, End, Problems, Questions)
"When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen."
- James Baker
(Related: Energy, Excess, Saying)
"Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses."
- James Baldwin
(Related: Beliefs, Impossibility)
"Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow."
- Honore De Balzac
(Related: Excess, Joy, Sorrow)
"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished."
- Roland Barthes
(Related: Love, Language)
"I sort of leave the character at the end of the day. I don't carry anything around with me - no excess baggage or unnecessary thoughts. I think it's too exhausting to do that. To put things into perspective - your work is your work, and your leisure time is something else."
- Sean Bean
(Related: Time, Work, Character, Thoughts, Day, End, Excess, Leisure, Perspective)
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
- Josh Billings
(Related: Truth, Excess)
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
- William Blake
(Related: Wisdom, Excess, Road)
"Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps."
- William Blake
(Related: Joy, Sorrow)
"Never order food in excess of your body weight."
- Erma Bombeck
(Related: Food, Body, Excess, Order, Weight)
"The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess."
- Christian Nestell Bovee
(Related: Excess, Fire)
"Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves."
- Christian Nestell Bovee
(Related: Cure, Egotism, Name, Self, Sensibility)
"The principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment."
- William J. Brennan
(Related: Punishment)
"Such lifestyle factors such as cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, little physical activity and low dietary calcium intake are risk factors for osteoporosis as well as for many other non-communicable diseases."
- Gro Harlem Brundtland
(Related: Alcohol, Risk, Smoking)
"I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except myself."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: Food, Health, Abstinence, Excess)
"I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than the excess in too much; the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: Death, Cause, Causes, Excess, First, Indigestion, May)
"Stock market corrections, although painful at the time, are actually a very healthy part of the whole mechanism, because there are always speculative excesses that develop, particularly during the long bull market."
- Ron Chernow
(Related: Time)
"The best things carried to excess are wrong."
- Charles Churchill
(Related: Excess, Wrong)
"Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Excess, Moderation)
"Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Excess, Reform, Will)
"The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives."
- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
(Related: Excess, Faults, Husbands, Wives)
"The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Age, Excess, Interest, Years, Youth)
"There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Nothing, Prudence)
"When sages commend excess, Desire is sick."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Desire, Excess)
"We'd dub the one that came off best into the final transcription. It gave us a chance to ad lib as much as we wanted, knowing that excess ad libbing could be sliced from the final product."
- Bing Crosby
(Related: Chance, Excess)
"A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health."
- Clarence Day
(Related: Health, Money, Addiction, Excess, May)
"This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare, where nobody is responsible for anything."
- Jacques Delors
(Related: Desire, Excess, Welfare)
"Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states."
- Demosthenes
(Related: Security, states)
"Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!"
- Charles Dickens
(Related: Vices)
"There is moderation even in excess."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Excess, Moderation)
"And it was back in the mid-1980s, and as I point out in a piece, that was when we are spending about eight percent of our gross domestic product on health care. And even then, we had the impression that so much of the excessive, aggressive medical treatment that took place at the end of life was not only unnecessary but it was cruel."
- Richard Dooling
(Related: Health, Life, Medical, Impression, Care, End, Treatment)
"We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway."
- Will Durant
(Related: Freedom, Living)
"Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle."
- Will Durant
(Related: Government, Excess)
"I've seen disgusting excess in business, and I've seen disgusting excess in Washington. But at the same time, I've certainly learned that Washington matters and that you can't ignore it, especially when you get into telecom."
- Esther Dyson
(Related: Business, Time, Excess, Washington)
"I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence."
- George Eliot
(Related: Conviction, Literary, Production)
"Excessive literary production is a social offense."
- George Eliot
(Related: Literary, Production)
"Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal."
- Gustave Flaubert
(Related: Man, Woman)
"Well, many of us believe that excessive media concentration is a subject that ought to be addressed, and it is, of course, the intention of the majority party not to allow that to be discussed."
- Barney Frank
(Related: Intention, Majority, Media, Party)
"In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest."
- J. William Fulbright
(Related: Society, People, Countries, Enjoyment, Example, Freedom, Living, World)
"The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends."
- J. William Fulbright
(Related: Power, Cause, Difficulties, Excess, Feeling, Results, Wrong)
"It is the fine excesses of life that make it worth living."
- Richard Le Gallienne
(Related: Life, Living, Worth)
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all."
- John W. Gardner
(Related: Conviction, Extremism, World)
"Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed."
- Benjamin Graham
(Related: Time, People, Fear, Hope, Greed)
"A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing."
- Alexander Hamilton
(Related: Debt, Will)
"One of the best lessons I learned early is that not everything in life is about you. It is about service. If you want trips and excessive gifts, then don't get into public service."
- Sean Hannity
(Related: Life, Gifts, Public, Service, Want)
"Everything in excess is opposed to nature."
- Hippocrates
(Related: Nature, Excess)
"Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it."
- Horace
(Related: Body, Excess, Mind, Yesterday)
"The value of the beans for oil production, as well as for human food, has become recognized so quickly and so generally during the past year that the crop has acquired a commercial standing far in excess of its previous status."
- David F. Houston
(Related: Food, Excess, Oil, Past, Production, Value)
"Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Boredom, Freedom, Liberty, Pleasure, Symbol)
"I'm sorry if the following sounds combative and excessively personal, but that's my general style."
- Ian Jackson
(Related: Style)
"The new fashion is to talk about the most private parts of your life; other fashion is to repent of your excesses and to criticize the drugs that made you happy in the other times."
- Mick Jagger
(Related: Life, Drugs, Fashion, Talk)
"I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace."
- Henry James
(Related: Age, Possibilities, Regret, Youth)
"Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf."
- William James
(Related: Heart, Caution, Errors, Nervousness, World)
"Nothing exceeds like excess."
- Al Jourgensen
(Related: Excess, Nothing)
"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."
- John Keats
(Related: Poetry, Thoughts, Excess, Remembrance)
"The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy."
- John Maynard Keynes
(Related: Power, Ideas, Errors, May)
"No one will deny that the excessive use of alcohol and alcoholic beverages would do more than any other single factor to make impossible a total war effort."
- William Lyon Mackenzie King
(Related: War, Alcohol, Effort, Will)
"Loyalty is a fine quality, but in excess it fills political graveyards."
- Neil Kinnock
(Related: Quality, Excess, Loyalty)
"One of our theories is that one can offset this excessive compulsion toward the spectacular with a return to simplicity."
- Rem Koolhaas
(Related: Simplicity, Theories)
"The professional study of economics has become ideological brainwashing. It is a defense of the excesses of the capitalist system."
- David Korten
(Related: Defense, Economics, Study)
"I thought that if you come across as a freak, there will be some kind of distance. Maybe the distance became excessive. I realized that people were afraid of me without knowing me."
- Thomas Kretschmann
(Related: Thought, People, Will)
"Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess."
- Walter Savage Landor
(Related: Men, Truth, Consequences, Excess)
"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Age)
"We are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition."
- Norman Lear
(Related: Country, Excess, Repetition, Violence)
"Crime is a product of social excess."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: Crime, Excess)
"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."
- James Madison
(Related: Power, Excess, Man, Opinions, Possessions, Property)
"Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness."
- Christopher Marlowe
(Related: Wealth, Cause, Covetousness, Excess)
"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
- W. Somerset Maugham
(Related: Habit, Effect, Excess, Moderation)
"An excessive knowledge of Marxism is a sign of a misspent youth."
- John McCarthy
(Related: Knowledge, Marxism, Youth)
"The worst excesses of the Congress of the 1980s pale in comparison with what is going on in Washington today."
- Marty Meehan
(Related: Congress, Today, Washington)
"The chief beginning of evil is goodness in excess."
- Menander
(Related: Beginning, Evil, Excess, Goodness)
"I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Father, Excess, Extreme, Personality, Poems)
"But we had - I think if you look at law enforcement 10 years ago, if you look at the challenges, the FBI was focused excessively on what was happening in the United States."
- Robert Mueller
(Related: Law, states, United, Years)
"Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance."
- John Henry Newman
(Related: Corruption, Evil, Excess)
"What was a problem was the excessive amount of media attention to the appointment of the first woman and everything she did. Everywhere that Sandra went, the press was sure to go. And that got tiresome; it was stressful."
- Sandra Day O'Connor
(Related: Attention, First, Media, Press, Woman)
"My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: Ideals, Liberalism)
"It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business."
- Theodore Parker
(Related: Business, Man, Pressure)
"I've always followed the rule that anything worth doing is worth doing excessively."
- Robert M. Parker, Jr.
(Related: Worth)
"One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case."
- James Payn
(Related: Men, Being, Difficulty, Embarrassment, Excess, Literary, Writing)
"Those jobs flee other states because of factors like excessive taxation, punitive regulation and frivolous lawsuits."
- Rick Perry
(Related: Jobs, states, Taxation)
"Witticisms please as long as we keep them within boundaries, but pushed to excess they cause offense."
- Phaedrus
(Related: Cause, Excess)
"I regret and suffer those losses, but it's God's will. He will pardon me if I committed excesses, but I don't think I did."
- Augusto Pinochet
(Related: God, Regret, Will)
"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."
- Plato
(Related: Causes, Direction)
"Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune."
- Plato
(Related: Cleverness, Evil, Ignorance, Learning, Misfortune, Training)
"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery."
- Plato
(Related: Excess, Liberty, Lies, Slavery, State)
"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."
- Plato
(Related: Change, Causes, Direction, Excess, Seasons)
"Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage."
- Plutarch
(Related: Courage, Cowardice, Excess)
"In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed."
- Edgar Allan Poe
"People endure what they endure and they deal with it. It may corrupt them. It may lead them into all sorts of compensatory excesses."
- Dennis Potter
(Related: People, May)
"We pay when old for the excesses of youth."
- J. B. Priestley
(Related: Old, Youth)
"Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents."
- John C. Ransom
(Related: Excess, Nonsense, Now, Poets)
"In every aspect of life, including the economic dimension, we are always challenged to do the right thing. In many cases in the market system, which allows a great deal of latitude for human choice, people can get carried away to excess."
- Lee R. Raymond
(Related: Life, People, Choice, Excess, Right)
"Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Money, Corporate, End, Entertainment, Excess, Film, Mind, Now, Pressure, Right)
"There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Excess)
"Tough times helped many commodities producers become lean and mean through consolidation, mergers and cost-cutting. All that excess supply has been sopped up."
- Jim Rogers
(Related: Excess)
"When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy."
- Salman Rushdie
(Related: Thought, Action)
"Skyrocketing insurance premiums are debilitating our Nation's health care delivery system and liability insurers are either leaving the market or raising rates to excessive levels."
- Jim Ryun
(Related: Health, Care, Nation)
"Sensual excess drives out pity in man."
- Marquis de Sade
(Related: Excess, Man, Pity)
"It's not the drinking to be blamed, but the excess."
- John Selden
(Related: Drinking, Excess)
"It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(Related: Greatness, Excess, Measure, Mind)
"If the United States is to protect itself from the economic and the political threats created by this excessive dependence, we must reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources and on foreign oil as quickly and as efficiently as possible."
- John Shadegg
(Related: Dependence, Energy, Oil, states, United)
"Sure, I did a lot of things in excess. But if you look at the core, the foundation of what I pursued, what red-blooded young American male in my position wouldn't?"
- Charlie Sheen
(Related: American, Excess)
"All pain is per se and especially in excess, destructive and ultimately fatal in its nature and effects."
- James Young Simpson
(Related: Nature, Excess, Pain)
"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience."
- Adam Smith
(Related: Virtue, Conscience, Vice)
"Many people submit to excessive appetites without realizing that they do not need to eat so much food."
- Kate Smith
(Related: Food, People)
"The first thing you need to know, in order to establish some perspective and avoid panic, is that the violent government excesses we're seeing today are far from unprecedented."
- L. Neil Smith
(Related: Government, First, Order, Perspective, Today)
"Drinking habits were very prevalent among men, and were not in any way disgraceful, unless excessive."
- Catherine Helen Spence
(Related: Men, Drinking, Habits)
"You're in a mess, and in excess."
- Billy Strayhorn
(Related: Excess)
"For fear of dropping the troops in the sea, the pilots tended to drop them too far inland - some of them actually in the British lines. The weapon containers often fell wide of the troops, which was another handicap that contributed to our excessive casualties."
- Kurt Student
(Related: Fear, Sea, Troops)
"This I consider to be a valuable principle in life: Do no thing in excess."
- Terence
(Related: Excess)
"The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality."
- Alexis de Tocqueville
(Related: Business, Equality, Men, Control, Taste)
"From a viable economy to the full funding of Headstart, from a clean environment to true equality for women, from a strong military to a commitment to racial brotherhood, from schools that are honored to streets free of excessive violence."
- Paul Tsongas
(Related: Equality, Women, Brotherhood, Commitment, Economy, Environment, Military, Schools, Violence)
"The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all."
- John Updike
(Related: Artists, Content, Excess, Obsessions, Rest, Risk)
"We never search for scandal, but we use it if it cries out to excess."
- Peter Utley
(Related: Excess, Scandal)
"Rock and Roll has certainly tried to take its toll on me. I'd rather not talk about my past excesses here, although some hardcore rockers might argue that those excesses were responsible for some great records, but I know which side I came out on."
- Tony Visconti
(Related: Past, Talk)
"Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy."
- Voltaire
(Related: Abstinence, Abuse, Excess, Man)
"One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good fortune."
- Lew Wallace
(Related: Fortune)
"The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us."
- Josiah Warren
(Related: Labor, Luxury, Necessity, Now, states)
"It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics."
- Paul Wellstone
(Related: Politics, Time, Belief, Extremes, Inequality, Potential)
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Excess, Moderation, Nothing)
"Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses."
- George Will
(Related: American, Americans)
"I am trying to get right with God. I'm sort of making a statement about the excessiveness."
- Lucinda Williams
(Related: God, Right, Trying)
"I have noticed, with much distress, the excessive wartime activity of the investigating bureaus of Congress and the administration, with their impertinent and indecent searching out of the private lives and the past political beliefs of individuals."
- Wendell Willkie
(Related: Beliefs, Congress, Past)
"It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others."
- Virginia Woolf
(Related: Men, Nature, Artist, Literature, Mind, Opinions, Reason)
"Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not."
- Xenophon
(Related: Excess, Grief, Injury, Living, Madness)
"Pride and excess bring disaster for man."
- Xun Zi
(Related: Disaster, Excess, Man, Pride)