Quotes about Extremes

I believe He wants us to love others so much that we go to extremes to help them.

The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.

His expression was suddenly serious as the tip of his finger traced her lips. "I never understood why history is filled with stories of men who waged wars over a woman they loved. There are many women in the world, and it was beyond my grasp what made one woman special enough to go to such extremes." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Now I understand.

But I will now go further, and confess to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

At certain revolutions all the damn'd are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.

You may have noticed how extremes call to each other, the spiritual to the animal, the caveman to the angel. You never saw a worse case than this.

The Church calls people to be not spiritual mediocrities, but great saints, and this is why its moral ideals are so stringent. Yet the Church also mediates the infinite mercy of God to those who fail to live up to that ideal (which means practically everyone). This is why its forgiveness is so generous and so absolute. To grasp both of these extremes is to understand the Catholic approach to morality.

All extremes are pernicious in various ways.

I would put no man upon extremes; but in this case flesh and blood doth make even good men so partial, that they take their duties, and duties of very great worth and weight, to be extremes. If worldly vanities did not blind us, we might see when public or other greater good did call us to deny ourselves and our families.