Excess Quotes

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Anglo-Irish author.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

William Blake (1757-1827) English Poet, artist

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.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist, philosopher.

Macaulay is well for a while, but one wouldn’t live under Niagara.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Let us teach ourselves that honorable step, not to outdo discretion.

Shakespeare.

All things that are pernicious in their progress must be evil in their birth, for no sooner is the government of reason thrown off, than they rush forward takes a pleasure to indulge itself; and having imperceptibly launched out into the main ocean, can find no place where to stop.

Cicero.

He who indulges his sense in any excesses, renders himself obnoxious to his own reason; and to gratify the brute in him, displeases them man, and sets his two natures at variance.

W. Scott.

The body oppressed by excesses, bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine Spirit we had been endowed with.

Horace.

The  excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.

Colton.

Pleasures bring effeminacy, and effeminacy foreruns ruin; such conquests, without blood or sweat, do sufficiently revenge themselves upon their intemperate conquerors.

Quarles.

Violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fore and power, which, as they kiss, consume. They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.

Shakespeare.

Pliability and liberality, when not restrained within due bounds, must ever turn to the ruin of their possessor.

Tacitus.

The best principles, if pushed to excess, degenerate into fatal vices. Generosity is nearly allied to extravagance; charity itself may lead to ruin; and the sternness of justice is but one step removed from the severity of oppression.

Alison.

The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man or angels come into danger by it.

Bacon.

Let pleasure be ever so innocent the excess is always criminal.

Evremond.

There can be no excess to love, to knowledge, to beauty, when these attributed are considered in the purest sense.

Emerson.

All excess brings on its own punishment, even here. By certain fixed, settled, and established laws of him who is the God of nature, excess of every kind destroys that constitution which temperance would preserve. The debauchee offers up his body a living sacrifice to sin.

Colton.

Too much noise deafens us; too much light blinds us; too great a distance, or too much of promixity equally prevents us from being able to see; too long or too short a discourse obscures out knowledge of a subject; too much of truth stuns us.

Pascal.

Excess generally causes reaction and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in government.

Plato.