Quotes about Excess

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.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.

The greatest crimes are not those committed for the sake of necessity but those committed for the sake of superfluity. One does not become a tyrant to avoid exposure to the cold.

The avarice of mankind is insatiable.

Virtue is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

On the other hand, because fortune is needed as an addition, some hold good fortune to be identical with Happiness: which it is not, for even this in excess is a hindrance, and perhaps then has no right to be called good fortune since it is good only in so far as it contributes to Happiness.

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape crush'd the sweet poison of misused wine.

Most of our life is a gorging of one artificially inflamed appetite after another.

One out of three hundred and twelve Americans is a bore... and a healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

Amusement, on the other hand, is sought for the sake of pleasure and is often carried to excess; it absorbs the energies that are required for useful work and thus proves a hindrance to life's true success.

Our danger is not from scarcity, but from abundance. We are constantly tempted to excess.

You think you're being difficult, my little sausage? Have I ever told you about the time I drank eight vodka martinis, took all my clothes off in front of a film crew and then broke my manager's nose?