Excess Quotes - Page 16

• "The suspect had experienced a ballistic interlude earlier in the evening," Miss Pao said, "regrettably not filmed, and relieved himself of excess velocity by means of an ablative technique."

  Neal Stephenson

  Mean, Missing, Technique

  Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.99, Spectra

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• We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess.

  Mark Twain

  Ice Cream, Ice, Cream

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4416, Delphi Classics

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• Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Inspirational, Stress, Men

  Of Human Bondage ch. 39 (1915)

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• Well, as you know, we're working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now, as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.

  Henry Paulson

  Past, People, Resilience

  "Five Years Later, Lehman Brothers Fall Still Stings". "All Things Considered" with John Ydstie, www.npr.org. September 11, 2013.

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• Misfortune occurs or can occur to anyone, of any sort of character. The eudaimonic has more resources to avoid it (being in autonomous control of his appetites and assumptions) and more resources to deal with it if it occurs (being better able to put it in perspective and maintain his own evenness of self-mastery). Tragedy as a dramatic form is meant to foster the ethos of sophrosyne or moderation, "nothing to excess"; it nurtures a sense of distance from the dominant illusions and delusions that may infect even aristoi.

  Kenny Smith

  Distance, Philosophy, Character

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

  Richard L. Evans

  Children, Teaching, Parent

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• Our vices are the excesses of our virtues.

  Pleasant Rowland

  Life, Vices, Virtue

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• Excess is part of my nature. Dullness is a disease. I really need danger and excitement. I'm never scared of putting myself out on a limb.

  Freddie Mercury

  Needs, Disease, Scared

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• So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame-'That's so 60's!'-the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last century,' just another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets. No, rebellion won't pose a problem for this social order.

  Laura Kipnis

  Love Is, Vocabulary, Order

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• The sweetest things become the most bitter by excess.

  Democritus

  Bitter, Sweetest

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• 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.

  Anuj

  Self, Collecting Things, Progress

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• We learned long ago that liberty could be preserved only by limiting in some way the freedom of action of individuals; that otherwise liberty would necessarily yield to absolutism; and in the same way we have learned that unless there be regulation of competition, its excesses will lead to the destruction of competition, and monopoly will take its place.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Yield, Long Ago, Competition

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• Perhaps I have lived my life to excess, but know what — if I had it to do over again, I would overdo it again.

  Robert Breault

  Risk, What If, Knows

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• Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Exaggeration Is, Generosity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.42, Courier Corporation

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• The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

  Hannah More

  Prayer, Book, Reading

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• You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been conservative on crime.

  Tom Shales

  Book, Law, Firsts

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• The mystic must be steadily told,-All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,-universal signs, instead of these village symbols,-and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Errors, Use

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.264, Penguin

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• Marital intercourse is certainly holy, lawful and praiseworthy in itself and profitable to society, yet in certain circumstances it can prove dangerous, as when through excess the soul is made sick with venial sin, or through the violation and perversion of its primary end, killed by mortal sin; such perversion, detestable in proportion to its departure from the true order, being always mortal sin, for it is never lawful to exclude the primary end of marriage which is the procreation of children.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Sex, Children, Order

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• Make me chaste and To what excesses will men not go for the sake of a religion in which they believe so little and which they practice so imperfectly!

  Jean de la Bruyere

  God, Believe, Men

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• I use the Clarisonic electronic skin cleansing system. It's great for removing excess oil and make-up and leaves my face feeling really smooth and clean. Then I apply Avon Anew Rejuvenate Day Revitalising Cream and Creme de la Mer Eye Concentrate. I think eye cream is so important - it keeps me looking young and prevents wrinkles.

  Fergie

  Eye, Thinking, Wrinkles

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• All 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 Berry

  Pride, Men, Rivers

  Wendell Berry (2009). “The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry”, p.29, Counterpoint Press

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• Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.

  Seneca the Younger

  Pleasure, Repetition, Enjoyment

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• In excess altercation, truth is lost.

  Publilius Syrus

  Argument, Truth Is, Lost

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• 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.

  Samuel Johnson

  Merit, Wealth, Praise

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.329

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• Sir, 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 Johnson

  Drinking, Wine, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1807). “Dr. Johnson's Table-talk: Containing Aphorisms on Literature, Life, and Manners, with Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Selected and Arranged from Mr. Boswell's Life of Johnson”, p.42

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