Quotes about excess

A collection of quotes on the topic of excess, other, use, doing.

Quotes about excess

José Baroja photo
Meryl Streep photo

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Joachim Peiper photo
Adam Weishaupt photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Tacitus photo
Xenophon photo
Michelangelo Buonarroti photo

“The greatest artist does not have any concept
Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain
Within its excess, though only
A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Source: I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation

Michael Parenti photo

“Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 12, p. 203

Paulo Coelho photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Adam Weishaupt photo
Adam Weishaupt photo
Henry James photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Aggression
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said, "Wait."
Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: "Wait."
One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach?"
Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you."

Camille Paglia photo

“Pornography is art, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant. Its glut and glitter are a Babylonian excess.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 67
Context: Pornography is art, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant. Its glut and glitter are a Babylonian excess. Modern middle-class women cannot bear the thought that their hard-won professional achievements can be outweighed in an instant by a young hussy flashing a little tits and ass. But the gods have given her power, and we must welcome it. Pornography forces a radical reassessment of sexual value, nature’s bequest of our tarnished treasure.

Oscar Wilde photo

“Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.”

Lord Illingworth, Act III
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

William Shakespeare photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Blaise Pascal photo

“Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Salman Rushdie photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=Nl-vaAdJD3MC&q=%22The+mother+of+excess+is+not+joy+but+joylessness%22&pg=PA230#v=onepage
Die mutter der Ausschweifung ist nicht die Freude, sondern die Freudlosigkeit.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bzUAAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Die+mutter+der+Ausschweifung+ist+nicht+die+Freude+sondern+die+Freudlosigkeit%22&pg=RA1-PA48#v=onepage
II.77
Human, All Too Human (1878)

Oscar Wilde photo
Euripidés photo
John Henry Newman photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Paul Valéry photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Robert Browning photo

“In the great right of an excessive wrong.”

Book III: The Other Half-Rome, line 1055.
Source: The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Emil M. Cioran photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“The fact that the causes and effective potentialities of Bolshevism were already existent in a latent form in democracy explains why Bolshevism flourishes only on democratic soil, and is indeed generally the inevitable consequence of a radical and excessively democratic conception of the State. Bolshevism allegedly makes a classless society its aim. The equality of whatever bears a human form, which democracy applied only to political and social life, is set up as a ruling principle for economic life also. In this respect there are supposed to be no differences left. But this equality of all individuals in respect of economic goods can, in the Marxist-Bolshevist view, result only from a brutal and pitiless class struggle. … It is only logical that in connexion with this, Bolshevism should proclaim the equality of nations and races. … The opposition between the democratic and the Bolshevist mentality and conception of the State are in the last resort merely theoretical, and here we have the answer to the mysterious riddle which overshadows Europe and the explanation both of the opposition in the lives of nations to-day and of the things which they have in common. It enables us to see at once why democracy and Bolshevism, which in the eyes of the world are irrevocably opposed to one another, meet again and again on common ground in their joint hatred of and attacks on authoritarian nationalist concepts of State and State systems. For the authoritarian nationalist conception of the State represents something essentially new. In it the French Revolution is superseded.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

On National-Socialism, Bolshevism & Democracy (September 10, 1938) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-national-socialism-bolshevism-and-democracy
1930s

Bertrand Russell photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“There is moderation even in excess.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book VI, Chapter 1.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“No one, I think, can deny that the depression of the agricultural interest is excessive. Though I can recall periods of suffering, none of them have ever equalled the present in its instances. … the agricultural interest is suffering from a succession of bad harvest, accompanied, for the first time, by extremely low prices. That is a remarkable circumstance that has never before occurred—a combination that has never before been encountered. In old days, when we had a bad harvest we had also the somewhat dismal compensation of higher prices; but now, when the harvests are bad the prices are lower rather than higher…nor is it open to doubt that foreign competition has exercised a most injurious influence on the agricultural interests of the country. The country, however, was perfectly warned that if we made a great revolution in our industrial system, that was one of the consequences that would accrue. I may mention that the great result of the returns we possess is this, that the immense importations of foreign agricultural produce have been vastly in excess of what the increased demands of our population actually require, and that is why the low prices are maintained…That is to a great degree the cause of this depression.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech in the House of Lords on the state of agriculture (28 March 1879), reported in The Times (29 March 1879), p. 8.
1870s

Ali al-Hadi photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Ronald Fisher photo

“In organisms of all kinds the young are launched upon their careers endowed with a certain amount of biological capital derived from their parents. This varies enormously in amount in different species, but, in all, there has been, before the offspring is able to lead an independent existence, a certain expenditure of nutriment in addition, almost universally, to some expenditure of time or activity, which the parents are induced by their instincts to make for the advantage of their young. Let us consider the reproductive value of these offspring at the moment when this parental expenditure on their behalf has just ceased. If we consider the aggregate of an entire generation of such offspring it is clear that the total reproductive value of the males in this group is exactly equal to the total value of all the females, because each sex must supply half the ancestry of all future generations of the species. From this it follows that the sex ratio will so adjust itself, under the influence of Natural Selection, that the total parental expenditure incurred in respect of children of each sex, shall be equal; for if this were not so and the total expenditure incurred in producing males, for instance, were less than the total expenditure incurred in producing females, then since the total reproductive value of the males is equal to that of the females, it would follow that those parents, the innate tendencies of which caused them to produce males in excess, would, for the same expenditure, produce a greater amount of reproductive value; and in consequence would be the progenitors of a larger fraction of future generations than would parents having a congenital bias towards the production of females. Selection would thus raise the sex-ratio until the expenditure upon males became equal to that upon females.”

On natural selection acting on sex ratio: Fisher's principle, Ch. 6, p. 141.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)

Theodore Roosevelt photo
Charles Fourier photo

“It is certain that nature inclines us toward the amorous orgy, just as much as toward the gastronomic orgy, and that while both are blameworthy in the excess, they would become praiseworthy in an order in which they could be equilibrated.”

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) French utopian socialist and philosopher

Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, J. Beecher (1986), p. 310
New Amorous World

Frédéric Chopin photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Emil M. Cioran photo
Napoleon I of France photo
Aaron T. Beck photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Voltaire photo

“Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Usez, n’abusez point; le sage ainsi l’ordonne.
Je fuis également Épictète et Pétrone.
L’abstinence ou l’excès ne fit jamais d’heureux.
"Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
Citas

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Thomas Mann photo
John Hennigan photo
Ramana Maharshi photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

On porte encore moins facilement la joie excessive que la peine la plus lourde.
Part II, ch. L
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Oscar Wilde photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”

Ch. 3 http://books.google.com/books?id=HSRFAAAAYAAJ&q=%22It+is+the+nature+of+the+artist+to+mind+excessively+what+is+said+about+him+Literature+is+strewn+with+the+wreckage+of+men+who+have+minded+beyond+reason+the+opinions+of+others%22&pg=PA98#v=onepage
A Room of One's Own (1929)

Pope Francis photo
Barack Obama photo
John Chrysostom photo

“Is it not excessively ridiculous to seek the good opinion of those whom you would never wish to be like?”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on the Gospel of Saint John http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/240103.htm, Homily III

Emil M. Cioran photo
Blaise Pascal photo
Jean-François Revel photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo
Johannes Brahms photo

“On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) German composer and pianist

Discussion of the Chaconne in Bach's Partita for Violin #2. Litzman, Berthold (editor). "Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 1853–1896". Hyperion Press, 1979, p. 16.

Blaise Pascal photo

“All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart as equal with all men... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring to discover to you.

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long—that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget”

Essay 1, Section 11
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Context: To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long—that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget[... ] Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine 'love of one's enemies' is possible—supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies!—and such reverence is a bridge to love.—For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor!

Caitlín R. Kiernan photo

“Could anything be more inimical to art than a fear of emotion, or a fear of "excessive" emotion, or a reluctance to express emotion around others?”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

"Would you like to see a little of it?" said the Mock Turtle. (3 April 2010)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2010
Context: Could anything be more inimical to art than a fear of emotion, or a fear of "excessive" emotion, or a reluctance to express emotion around others? No, of course not. Art can even best the weights of utter fucking ignorance and totalitarian repression, but it cannot survive emotional constipation.
I want a T-shirt that says, "Art is Emo." We live in an age where people are more apt to believe a thing if they read it on a T-shirt.

Aristotle photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo

“Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by reformer and reactionary alike.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Context: Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity. Each actual occasion contributes to the circumstances of its origin additional formative elements deepening its own peculiar individuality. Consciousness is only the last and greatest of such elements by which the selective character of the individual obscures the external totality from which it originates and which it embodies. An actual individual, of such higher grade, has truck with the totality of things by reason of its sheer actuality; but it has attained its individual depth of being by a selective emphasis limited to its own purposes. The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.

Ingo Molnar photo

“I have a very simple question to people … who seem to suffer from excessive narcissism: please name three other persons who are smarter and more capable than you, in the field you work in.”

Ingo Molnar Linux kernel programmer

In most cases they are utterly unable to answer that question honestly.
A comment http://lwn.net/Articles/447204/ at LWN.net in 2011.

Socrates photo

“To avoid excess in everything.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Diogenes Laertius

Bahá'u'lláh photo

“If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the restraints of moderation.”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh

Fernando Pessoa photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Jon Krakauer photo
Joseph Campbell photo

“When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo

“There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks ofchallenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Thomas Gilovich photo
Anaïs Nin photo
James Madison photo
Jen Lancaster photo

“I'm not lazy. I'm simply judicious about excess movement.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Source: Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer

Edward Gorey photo

“Such excess of passion
is quite out of fashion”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Source: Amphigorey

Robert Musil photo
Meg Cabot photo
Sylvia Day photo
Eric Schlosser photo
Plutarch photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Henning Mankell photo
Jon Krakauer photo