Quotes about extreme
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“It is extremely difficult to stay alert & attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monolog inside your head.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

"The Sublime and the Good", in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.
Source: Existentialists and Mystics Writings on Philosophy and Literature

Love, Art, Reality

“I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell.”

Alan Moore book From Hell

Source: From Hell

Men, Hell

“Beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Dreams

“Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Fate, Family

“And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections (2001)
Context: All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn't have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?

Truth, Sadness

“You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.'
'And yet it is still extremely funny.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Time of My Life

“Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Birth, Cry

“What is it with you and girls, Adrian, dear? Why do they either mean nothing to you or everything? It's always an extreme."
"Because I don't do things in halves, mom. Especially when it comes to love.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

Love, Girl, Moms

“Death is just a new beginning…at least in my religion. And extreme inebriation seriously helps. (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Death, Religion, Help

“Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Life, Behavior, Mood, Understanding

“Speak in extremes, it'll save you time.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Time

“Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

“Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

The Taming of the Screw (1983)

Drink

“He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.”

Elena Ferrante book The Days of Abandonment

Source: The Days of Abandonment

Books, Way, Reading

“It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Life, Support

“You're beautful. Yes you are, you're very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Beauty

“There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Life, Truth, Parting, Personality

“I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Thinking

“People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

People, Fear, Thinking, Passion

“Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are of the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.”

Salman Rushdie Shame

Source: Shame

“I also think he is given to disguises… Sometimes he wears spectacles and sometimes he does not. And twice he has worn an extremely peculiar hat. Inside.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: What Happens in London

Thinking

“They aren't the brightest crayons in the box
-Max(saving the world and other extreme sports)”

James Patterson (1947) American author

World, Sport, Box

“I’m about to make a wild, extreme, and severe relationship rule: the word “busy” is a load of crap and is most often used by assholes.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Business

“It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Life, Art, Way

“she committed suicide by putting her extremities down the garbage disposal-first one arm and then, kind of miraculously if you think about it, the other arm.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Thinking, Suicide

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

“i have to cross the river of extreme awkwardness in order to get to the paradise on the other side.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“What TV is extremely good at—and realize that this is "all it does"—is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

People, Thinking

“Piper gave Lit a friendly sorry-about-that smile. Even with her hair messed up and wearing two-day-old clothes, she looked extremely cute, and Jason felt a little jealous she was giving Lit that smile.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Smile, Clothes

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet (1909): The Rejected Statement, Pt. I : The Limits to Toleration
1900s

“I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight… I agree.”

Koren Zailckas (1980) American writer

Source: Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

“You know how hard it is to feel like an extreme falcon-headed combat machine when somebody calls you "chicken man"?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Feeling

“Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Love, Help, Personality, Despair

“What do you say, Pooh?"
Pooh opened his eyes with a jerk and said, "Extremely."
"Extremely what?" asked Rabbit.
"What you were saying," said Pooh. "Undoubtably.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner

Jerk

“I'm a girl of extremes. When I love something, I'm like a puppy dog (without all the licking). When I'm cranky, I'm a wasp (like a whole hive of 'em). And when I'm angry, I'm a Mother Bear with a predator after her cubs: Dangerous.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Love, Dogs, Girl

“Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

Source: The Heart of the Matter

Evil, Selfishness, Happiness

“I mean putting yourself out there in the way of overwhelming happiness and knowing you're also putting yourself in the way of terrible harm. I'm scared to be this happy. I'm scared to be this extreme.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Way, Happiness

“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1770s, Thoughts on Government (1776)

People, Youth, Education, Law

“I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Problem

“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable."
"Because you are not fit to go there," I answered. "All sinners would be miserable in heaven.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

“Throwing things horrified me. I suffered extreme, paralyzing anxiety when it came to anything remotely athletic. I wouldn't even run to catch the school bus because I knew I'd trip and then get teased for a year.”

Augusten Burroughs Possible Side Effects

Source: Possible Side Effects

School, Suffering

“Lyc-V is a jealous virus. It exterminates all other invaders with extreme prejudice.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.”

Walter Isaacson (1952) American writer and biographer

Hell, Water

“Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?”

Arianna Huffington (1950) Greek-American author and syndicated columnist

World, Water

“Law applied to its extreme is the greatest injustice”

Marcus Tullius Cicero De Officiis

Source: On Duties

Law

“Supreme resources spring from extreme resolutions.
Les Miserables, page 674”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Spring

“Stress level: extreme. It's like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.”

Fiona Wood (1958) British–Australian physician and plastic surgeon

Source: Six Impossible Things

“This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”

Ben Elton (1959) English comedian, author, playwright, actor and director

Source: Bachelor Boys: The Young Ones Book

“Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: True Love

Love, Life

“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Madness

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Fear, Music, Feeling

“Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.
-Aunt Beast”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“It is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Drawing

“He issued orders to us: demigods who come to us for aid are no longer to be tolerated. We are to crush your little mortal faces.'
There was an uncomfortable silence.
'That sounds… extreme,' Jason ventured.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Silence

“But if the general opinion of Mankind is optimistic then we're in for a period of extreme popularity for science fiction. If the general opinion is pessimistic, fantasy is going to hold its own.”

David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist

Science

“When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace

“We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

“Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.

Rutabaga.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Books, Way, Sense

“Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty

“You really don’t want to take that tone with me. (Varyk)
Well, I do have several others we can choose from. Contemptuous. Angry. Snide. Aggravated. How about I just settle on extreme sarcasm and we call it even? (Dev)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

“The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

Love, Life, Flowers, Freedom

“Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Graduation, Dreams, Imagination

“Every man, woman, and child is capable of extreme and utter prejudice and cruelty when they feel justified in their hatred.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

Feeling

“Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Discipline: The Glad Surrender

God, Error, Feeling, Strong

“My hobby is extreme Catholic behavior -- BEFORE the Reformation.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Behavior

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant.”

Robert F. Kennedy book The Pursuit of Justice

The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents. <br class="br">" Extremism, Left and Right http://books.google.com/books?id=o3mHAAAAMAAJ&q=%22What+is+objectionable+what+is+dangerous+about+extremists+is+not+that+they+are+extreme+but+that+they+are+intolerant%22+%22evil+is+not+what+they+say+about+their+cause+but%22&pg=PA68#v=onepage," The Pursuit of Justice, pt. 3 (1964)

“I would like to fall in love again but my only hope is that love doesn't happen to me so often after this. I don't want to get so used to falling in love that i get curious to experience something more extreme - whatever that may be.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God

Love, Hope

“Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Pleasure, Sex, Thinking

“Suddenly, details seemed extremely important. Details were something to grab on to, a way to insert myself into the story.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Way

“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique
Context: Sexual anxiety is caused by the external frustration of instinctual gratification and is internally anchored by the fear of the dammed-up sexual excitation. This leads to orgasm anxiety, which is the ego's fear of the over-powering excitation of the genital system due to its estrangement from the experience of pleasure. Orgasm anxiety constitutes the core of the universal, biologically anchored pleasure anxiety. It is usually expressed as a general anxiety about every form of vegetative sensation and excitation, or the perception of such excitation and sensations. The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.

Life, Pleasure, Fear

“Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.”

Garrison Keillor book Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories

Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 19
Source: Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories

Parent

“Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien… What is driving religious feeling today is a wish for contact with this other universe.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Feeling, Intelligence, Universe, Rage

“It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration,—nay, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Of Hearing, 6
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Parallel Lives

“That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Time

“Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.”

Flann O'Brien (1911–1966) Irish writer

Source: The Best of Myles (1968)

Country

“The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Death, Penalty

“Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”

Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Heart

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Fear, Music, Feeling

“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

Fear, Dreams, Home

“I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.”

Paul Krugman book The Conscience of a Liberal

Source: The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), Ch. 13. The Conscience of a Liberal http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=5887. W. W. Norton & Company. 352 pages ISBN 978-0-393-06069-0, 1st edition (2007)

Law, Democracy, Support, Wealth

“In a world of extreme beauty, anyone normal is ugly.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

World, Beauty

“Geometry has two great treasures: one is the Theorem of Phythagoras, the other the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio. The first we can compare to a mass of gold; the other we may call a precious jewel.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

As quoted by Karl Fink, Geschichte der Elementar-Mathematik (1890) translated as A Brief History of Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=3hkPAAAAIAAJ (1900, 1903) by Wooster Woodruff Beman, David Eugene Smith. Also see Carl Benjamin Boyer, A History of Mathematics (1968). <br class="br">Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596)

“The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Feeling, Kiss, Forgetting

“This behavior may… counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl, Interrupted”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Behavior, Feeling, Girl

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Life, Food, Soul, Water

“This is insane," I said blankly. "I'm the instrument of an all-powerful primordial deity's wave of chaos and destruction."

"That's kind of extreme" said Dante jovially. "It's not like you work for Google or anything.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Dreams

“A lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not
that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like
to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be
extremely good at. It can be anything.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

People

“Oh.' I shot upright. 'I was in Mongolia.'
Note to self: learn to be a less extreme liar.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Learning

“Extreme seductiveness is at the boundary of horror”

Georges Bataille book Story of the Eye

Source: Story of the Eye

“The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people is extremely unjust, and its consequences are ruinous to art itself…it is the same as saying some kind of food is good but most people can't eat it.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

People, Food, Art, Time

“If we observe the totality of Camille Pissarro's works, we find there, despite the fluctuations, not only an extreme artistic will which never lies, but what is more, an essentially intuitive pure-bred art... He looked at everybody, you say! Why not? Everyone looked at him, too, but denied him. He was one of my masters and I do not deny him.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Quote c. 1902, in Racontars d'un Rapin, Paul Gauguin; as quoted in 'Introduction' of Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished French letters by Lionel Abel); Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 15
After Paul Cezanne it was Gauguin who came to ask advice and painted landscape at the side of the much elder Pissarro. The traces of this apprenticeship as an impressionist were soon to disappear from Gauguin's works, but shortly before he died, he wrote these sentences about his former teacher
1890s - 1910s

Art

“Poverty Jet Set: A group of people given to chronic travelling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permenant residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people named Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent flyer programs at parties.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Definitions

People, Travel