Quotes About Excess

We live in a time of excess - excess population, excess information.

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.

A 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.

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.

People are always trading their excess for somebody else's excess. One country has a lot of aluminum so they trade aluminum for sugar. It's the law of supply and demand.

... But as a Godless greed pursued its career from excess to excess, it provoked a sort of twin hostile brother, equally Godless, born in the same atmosphere of utter disregard for the foundational virtues of humility and charity. This hostile twin brother of Capitalism was destined to be called Communism, and is today setting out to murder its elder.

Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.

When it comes to satisfying our spiritual appetites, there is no such thing as excess. There are no restraints placed on us by God. There are no rules of temperance or laws requiring moderation or boundaries beyond which we cannot go in seeking to enjoy Him. We need never pause to inquire whether we've crossed a line or become overindulgent. You need never fear feeling too good about God.

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it's distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess; this is part of life. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.

Feminism or the family? Carried to excess maybe. I have insisted that women cannot be defined solely in those terms. But for a great many women - not all, because we are only beginning to realize and affirm the diversity of women themselves - choosing motherhood makes motherhood itself a liberating choice.

It is not that fathers are better or worse, not that they are more loved or criticized, but rather that they are viewed with far less intensity. There is no Philip Roth or Woody Allen or Nancy Friday who writes about fathers with a runaway excess of humor, horror ... feeling. Most of us let our fathers off the hook.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

The media is almost entirely about defining the subject, defining the citizen, as one of three things: a consumer, a threat in this new age of surveillance, or as utterly disposable. Excess.

Success is not a process of accumulating wealth, building mass relationship or collecting things in excess, but developing, excelling, fostering and growing the happiness for self and others without recess to treat it as the life's progress.

They thought I suffered from lack of exterior, when I suffered from excess of interior

A garlic caress is stimulating. A garlic excess soporific.

You gotta take care of yourself; you cant do anything in excess.

What makes me so certain that the natural human lifespan is far in excess of the actual one is this. Among all my autopsies (and I have performed over 1000), I have never seen a person who died of old age. In fact, I do not think that anyone has ever died of old age yet. We invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body.

The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.

Wooden ships are a hippie dream, capsized in excess if you know what I mean.

Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.

O Christ Jesus, really present upon the altar, I cast myself down at Your feet; may all adoration be offered to You in the Sacrament which You left to us on the eve of Your Passion, as the testimony of the excess of Your love!

Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.

Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.

The name of medicine is thought to have been given from 'moderation', modus, that is, from a due proportion, which advises that things be done not to excess, but 'little by little', paulatim. For nature is pained by surfeit but rejoices in moderation. Whence also those who take drugs and antidotes constantly, or to the point of saturation, are sorely vexed, for every immoderation brings not health but danger.

O Allah do not give me in excess lest I may be disobedient.

Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.

The 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.

Error 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.

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess.

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.

It is almost certain that excess in eating is the cause of almost all the diseases of the body, but its effects on the soul are even more disastrous.

Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.

Parents who indulge themselves 'in moderation' may have children who indulge themselves to excess.

A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers.

Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean. Indeed the very names of some directly imply evil, for instance malice, shamelessness, envy, and, of actions, adultery, theft, murder. All these and similar actions and feelings are blamed as being bad in themselves; it is not the excess or deficiency of them that we blame. It is impossible therefore ever to go right in regard to them - one must always be wrong.

I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.

I never felt that there was anything enviable in youth. I cannot recall that any of us, as youths, admired our condition to excess or had a desire to prolong it.

An elegant simplicity is an understated, organic aesthetic that contrasts with the excess of consumerist lifestyles. Drawing from influences ranging from Zen to the Quakers, it celebrates natural materials and clean, functional expressions, such as are found in many of the hand-made arts and crafts from this community.

Religious leaders could play a significant role in making explicit the connections between current concerns for the environment and age-old teachings about our dependence on the natural world, and the dangers of greed and excess

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

If Earth ever suffers a runaway greenhouse effect (like what has happened on Venus), then our atmosphere would trap excess amounts of solar energy, the air temperature would rise, and the oceans would swiftly evaporate into the atmosphere as they sustained a rolling boil. This would be bad.

Excess of trouble may, for a time, distract and overwhelm the soul. Our Lord himself seems to have experienced somewhat of this. Our prayers, perhaps, are never more acceptable, than when they are offered in broken accents, in sighs, and groans.

The role of campaign contributions in our political system and the role of lobbyists have now reached levels that are quite unhealthy for the operations of our democracy. But the antidote, as in past eras of lobbyist excess, is for more involvement by citizens to build pressure on members of the House and Senate to serve the public interest.