Excess Quotes - Page 4

• The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

  William Blake

  Life, Greed, Experience

  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell "Proverbs of Hell" (1790 - 1793)

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• Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches. The other has seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other, that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable. What is necessary is to reduce the matches and to clean up the gasoline.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Two, Enemy

  During a panel discussion in ABC News Viewpoint following the TV movie "The Day After", November 20, 1983.

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• Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid. They know one thing to excess; they know nothing else. Pursuing facts too doggedly and unimaginatively, they miss all the charming things that are not facts. ... Too much learning, like too little learning, is an unpleasant and dangerous thing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Stupid, Knowledge, Science

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• It is more rewarding to be complicit with scarcity than excess.

  Will Oldham

  Scarcity

  "The Pretender". Interview with Kelefa Sanneh, www.newyorker.com. January 5, 2009.

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• Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Mind, Atheism, Reform

  Biographia Literaria ch. 1 (1817)

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• 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

  Money, Hurt, Taken

  Clarence Day (1921). “The Crow's Nest”

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• 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

  Birthday, Regret, Thinking

  Letter to Hugh Walpole, 21 Aug. 1913

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• 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

  Inspirational, Reading Poetry, Remembrance

  Letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 238

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• 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

  Artist, Risk, Literature

  John Updike (2012). “Assorted Prose”, p.189, Random House

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• Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.

  Lord Dunsany

  Taken, Math, Statistics

  "My Ireland". Book by Lord Dunsany (Chapter XIX: Weeds and Moss), 1937.

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• If we use our fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful, and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations. The heat of the sun's rays represents an immense amount of energy vastly in excess of waterpower...The sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land.

  Nikola Tesla

  Rivers, Lakes, Heat Of The Sun

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• Somehow I reached excess without ever noticing when I was passing through satisfaction.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Satisfaction, Brilliant, Passing

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

  Josh Billings

  Funny, Trust, Truth

  Quoted in Evan Esar, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949)

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• The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Passion, Fire, Way

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.77

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• The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Wisdom, Fool

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.447, Рипол Классик

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• 

  For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.

  Aeschylus

  Men, Sight, Justice

  Aeschylus, Hugh Lloyd-Jones (1970). “Oresteia”, p.50, Univ of California Press

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• Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

  Charles Dickens

  Book, Fall, Beer

  Barnaby Rudge Ch. 7

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• Crime is a product of social excess.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Crime, Social, Products

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• There is moderation even in excess.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Moderation

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.303, Delphi Classics

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• Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

  Horace

  Time, Past, Weight Loss

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• 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

  Physicians, Abstinence

  Giacomo Casanova “The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt”, Library of Alexandria

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• Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

  Will Durant

  Government, Principles, Form

  Will Durant (2012). “Story of Philosophy”, p.26, Simon and Schuster

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• Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

  Marquis de Sade

  Men, Sensual, Pity

  Marquis de Sade (1999). “The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales”, p.102, OUP Oxford

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• Tough times helped many commodities traders become lean and mean through consolidation, mergers and cost cutting. All that excess supply has been sopped up.

  Jim Rogers

  Mean, Cutting, Tough Times

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• 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 Crowe Ransom

  Half, Ransom, Sober

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