Excess Quotes - Page 22

• There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Forbidden Love, Kind, Forbidden

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• In everything the middle course is best: all things in excess bring trouble to men.
  [Lat., Modus omnibus in rebus, soror, optimum est habitu;
  Nimia omnia nimium exhibent negotium hominibus ex se.]

  Plautus

  Men, Trouble, Moderation

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• Who wishes to give himself an abundance of business let him equip these two things, a ship and a woman. For no two things involve more business, if you have begun to fit them out. Nor are these two things ever sufficiently adorned, nor is any excess of adornment enough for them.

  Plautus

  Business, Two, Giving

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 85-87, Poenulus, I. 2. 1, 1922.

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• We ought always to conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves. Excess either way shocks, and every man truly wise ought to attend to this in his dress as well as language, never to be affected in anything and follow without being in too great haste the changes of fashion.

  Moliere

  Wise, Fashion, Men

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• A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.

  William Hazlitt

  Animal, Safety, Enemy

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• God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Hope, Men, Order

  Henry Ward Beecher (1871). “Lectures to young men, on various important subjects”, p.314

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• To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Religion, Littles

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• Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Wrinkles, Age, Dresses

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• The victims of ennui paralyze all the grosser feelings by excess, and torpify all the finer by disuse and inactivity. Disgusted with this world, and indifferent about another, they at last lay violent hands upon themselves, and assume no small credit for the sang froid with which they meet death. But, alas! such beings can scarcely be said to die, for they have never truly lived.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hands, Feelings, World

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

  Joseph Addison

  Music, Religious, Indulge In

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• An excess of hoarded wealth is the death of many.

  Juvenal

  Wealth

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• Opera is an extremely disciplined art form, and every excess a singer indulges in has a direct effect on the voice.

  Beverly Sills

  Art, Indulge In, Direct Effect

  "Beverly: An Autobiography". Book by Lawrence Linderman, 1987.

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• Be assured that, although men of eminent genius have been guilty of all other vices, none worthy of more than a secondary name has ever been a gamester. Either an excess of avarice or a deficiency of what, in physics, is called excitability, is the cause of it; neither of which can exist in the same bosom with genius, with patriotism, or with virtue.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Men, Names, Gambling

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].”, p.125

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• 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.

  Ellen Goodman

  Friday, Father, Writing

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

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• We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; qualities that are in excess are so much at variance with our feelings that they are impalpable: we do not feel them, though we suffer from their effects.

  Blaise Pascal

  Feelings, Suffering, Quality

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• Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues--constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness--are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.

  Edmund Burke

  Fall, Political, Quality

  William Pitt (Earl of Chatham), Edmund Burke, Thomas Erskine Baron Erskine, Jean Gabriel Peltier (1834). “Celebrated Speeches of Chatham, Burke, and Erskine: To which is Added the Arguement of Mr. Mackintosh in the Case of Peltier”, p.87

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• I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.

  Agnes Repplier

  Learning, Personality, Twenties

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• Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.

  Jeremy Collier

  Ingredients, Degenerates, Virtue

  Jeremy COLLIER (the Nonjuror.), J. E. (1838). “Pearls of Great Price: or, Maxims, reflections, characters and thoughts, on miscellaneous subjects ... Selected from the works of the Rev. Jeremy Collier by the editor of “Sir William Jones's Discourses,” etc. [The editor's preface signed: J. E., i.e. James Elmes.]”, p.101

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• The fact is I don't lead a simple enough inner life. I indulge in excesses, bacchanalia of the spirit. Perhaps I identify too much with everything I read and study. Someone like Dostoevsky still shatters me.

  Etty Hillesum

  Simple, Indulge In, Too Much

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.93, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.

  Joseph Joubert

  Book, Littles, Quantum

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• [On Addis Ababa:] Among the city's handicaps are an immaturity for which no one can be blamed, as it was founded only eighty years ago, and a proliferation of architectural excesses for which many people can and should be blamed.

  Dervla Murphy

  Years, Cities, People

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• Now that I have written many words,
  and let out so many loves, for so many,
  and been altogether what I always was
  a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
  I find the effort useless.

  Anne Sexton

  Poetry, Effort, Greed

  Anne Sexton, “Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women”

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• On the plane, an eight-year-old with an excess of testosterone keeps running across my feet. Finally I grab him by his T-shirt and say, very sweetly, 'Listen, darling, if you don't stop trampling me I'm going to make you sit on my lap while I tell you my entire life story. Including a lot of details about drug rehab and my divorce.' He goes back to his seat.

  Rosanne Cash

  Running, Divorce, Years

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• What the altar-bound of today end up buying from their numberless vendors is a dog's breakfast of bridal excess - part society wedding of the twenties, part Long Island Italian wedding of the fifties. It's The Philadelphia Story and The Wedding Singer served up together in one curious and costly buffet.

  Caitlin Flanagan

  Dog, Italian, Philadelphia

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• The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths; and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population.

  Thomas Malthus

  Population, Causes, Bears

  THOMAS MALTHUS, JULIAN HUXLEY, FREDERICK OSBORN (1960). “ON POPULATION THREE ESSAYS”

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