Popular quotes about Excess! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It is better to err by excess of mercy than by excess of severity. . .Wilt thou become a Saint? Be severe to thyself but kind to others.
Saint John ChrysostomA physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.
Aldous HuxleyHe who holds on to the Way seeks no excess. Since he lacks excess, he can grow old in no need to be renewed.
LaoziExcess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty.
C. S. LewisOf all faults the greatest is the excess of impious terror, dishonoring divine grace. He who despairs wants love, wants faith; for faith, hope, and love are three torches which blend their light together, nor does the one shine without the other.
Pietro MetastasioIt is such a great fault to talk too much that, in business and conversation, if what is good is also brief, it is doubly good, and one gains by brevity what one often loses by an excess of words.
Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de SableWe are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics. An endless, endless of going on. No habitat where the brain can recognize itself. No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication.
Jack GilbertVirtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.
AristotleExcess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset MaughamThere had been so many easy words between them that Daniel was guilty of nodding every now and then and tuning out the excess. He hadn't known, at the time, that he should have been hoarding these, like bits of sea glass hidden in the pocket of a winter coat to remind him that once it had been summer.
Jodi PicoultAs frost, raised to its utmost intensity, produces the sensation of fire, so any good quality, overwrought and pushed to excess, turns into its own contrary.
William MatthewsThere are two kinds of businesses: The first earns 12%, and you can take it out at the end of the year. The second earns 12%, but all the excess cash must be reinvested - there's never any cash. It reminds me of the guy who looks at all of his equipment and says, 'There's all of my profit.' We hate that kind of business.
Charlie MungerIt is true that zeal is the soul of the virtues, but most certainly, Monsieur, it must be according to knowledge, as Saint Paul says; that means: according to knowledge of experience. And because young people ordinarily do not possess this experiential knowledge, their zeal goes to excess, especially in those who have a natural asperity.
Vincent de PaulToo great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.
Jean de la BruyereWhat fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating
Jean AnouilhIt is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and prefer things in measure to things in excess.
Seneca the ElderThe difference between God and the devil is in nothing except in unselfishness and selfishness. The devil knows as much as God, is as powerful as God; only he has no holiness that makes him a devil. Apply the same idea to the modern world: excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils.
Swami VivekanandaAll goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman's silence receiving the river's grace, the gardener's musing on rows.
Wendell BerryError is multiform (for evil is a form of the unlimited, as in the old Pythagorean imagery, and good of the limited), whereas success is possible in one way only (which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed - easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it); so this is another reason why excess and deficiency are a mark of vice, and observance of the mean a mark of virtue: Goodness is simple, badness is manifold.
AristotleIt is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to accumulate excess goods, squandering available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of subsistence.
Pope John Paul IIThe magic of purpose and of love in its purest form. Not televison love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too small and in too much excess, but just love. Love like rain, like the smell of a tangerine, like a surprise found in your pocket.
Deb CalettiSir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.
Samuel JohnsonI understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.
Jon KrakauerWe are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition.
Norman LearThat this liberty [of the press] is often carried to excess; that it has sometimes degenerated into licentiousness, is seen and lamented, but the remedy has not yet been discovered. Perhaps it is an evil inseparable from the good with which it is allied; perhaps it is a shoot which cannot be stripped from the stalk without wounding vitally the plant from which it is torn. However desirable those measures might be which might correct without enslaving the press, they have never yet been devised in America.
James MadisonWhen you do hard routes, you have to try hard. They're not easy routes. You have to give everything you have. You have to get totally animalistic. When you're super pumped, I have to yell to bear down. [...] It's like martial arts. When Bruce lee threw a punch, he had to mean it. Haahhh! Like that. When you're doing a hard move, there is this excess energy you have to let out. Air explodes out of you.
Chris SharmaThe whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.
Edmund BurkeI can't think of a time in the history of man when food was in excess. We're dealing with the same old problems we've dealt with for 60,000 years.
Homaro CantuCareful economic research has shown public-sector workers receive a level of compensation, pension benefits, and retiree health coverage in excess of what comparable workers in the private sector enjoy. In some instances, the total premium can be 30 percent or higher.
Bob BeauprezOne of the real dangers of loyalty is that it may become associated with certain types of group-think, chauvinism, jingoism, and thus become socially destructive in ways that many other virtues are not likely to be when they are corrupted. Nationalism and patriotism are especially prone to misguided excess.
John KleinigThere is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
Victor HugoWhen I stand on my special-issue "Intelligent Investor" ladder and peer out over the frenzied crowd, I see very few others doing the same. Many stocks remain overvalued, and speculative excess - both on the upside and on the downside - is embedded in the frenzy around stocks of all stripes. And yes, I am talking about March 2001, not March 2000.
Michael BurryGolf cannot be played in anger, or in any mood of emotiional excess. Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit if not in rage surely in bewilderment, or gloom, or in cynicism, or even hysterically - all of those emotional excesses must be contained by the professional. Which is why balance is one of the essential ingredients of golf. Professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course - whatever emotions are seething within - with the grim yet placid and bored look of cowpokes, slack-bodied in their saddles, who have been tending the same herd for two months.
George PlimptonOne may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.
Joseph AddisonThe Declaration [of Independence] was not a protest against government, but against the excess of government. It prescribed the proper role of government, to secure the rights of individuals and to effect their safety and happiness. In modern society, no individual can do this alone. So government is not a necessary evil but a necessary good.
Gerald R. FordTemperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.
AristotleI train twice a day and I make sure I eat right. I'm an avid tea drinker and I enjoy the benefits of drinking MateFit. It gives me energy, speeds up my metabolism and helps me shed excess water weight. I also do everything from MMA sparring to strength and conditioning. I make sure to do a combination of different things with my training.
Miesha TateNo one should judge that he has greater perfection because he performs great penances and gives himself in excess to the staying of the body than he who does less, inasmuch as neither virtue nor merit consists therein; for otherwise he would be an evil case, who for some legitimate reason was unable to do actual penance. Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing.
St. Catherine of SienaBoth belly bulge and love handles are about excess body fat, not lack of muscle. Crunches and ab exercises are therefore not the solution. The best way to reduce these problem areas is to reduce your overall body fat percentage, and we all know that that requires diet and exercise.
Jillian Michaels