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Excess Quotes

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Excess Quotes

“Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.”

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Book:Healology
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“In the lives of saints I look for confirmation of excess. To them it is not strange to spend nights on a mountain or to forgo food. For them, the visionary and the everyday coincide. Above all, they have no domestic virtues, preferring intensity to comfort. Despite their inhospitable ways, they ferment with unexpected life, like those bleak railway cuttings that host horizontal dandelions. They know there is no passion without pain.”

PainReligionPassionIntensityExcessVisionariesSaints
Book:The World and Other Places: Stories
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“Everything must be structured around the center - from the core of the being of the person and not just one aspect of him, from his heart, as the vernacular names the source of the individual - and not from his head. The excessive stretching of the consciousness of responsibility - for which the excessive expansion of the belief in reason, in the social and political effectiveness of conviction, is to blame - already has been broken asunder in the world ... For the most serious human evil is lack of moderation.”

EvilMoralityGuiltExcessModerationExtremismPerfectionismPuritanism
Book:Grenzen der Gemeinschaft
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“My people!" he shouted in the stentorian voice. "I shall speak now of us! Who are we? We are an articulate people, yet a people of few words. We feel deeply, yet refrain from embarrassing displays of emotion. Though firm, we are never too firm, though we love fun, we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous, unless that is our intent. Our national coloration, though varied, is consistent. Everything about us is as it should be, for example, we can be excessive when excess is called for, and yet, even in our excess, we show good taste, although never is our taste so super-refined as to seem precious. Even the extent to which we are moderate is moderate, except when we have decided to be immoderately moderate, or even shockingly flamboyant, at which time our flamboyance is truly breathtaking in a really startling way, and when we decide to make mistakes, our mistakes are as big and grand and irrevocable as any nation's colossal errors, and when we decide to deny our mistakes, we sound just as if we are telling the truth, and when we decide to admit our errors, we do so in a way that is truly moving in its extreme frankness! Am I making sense? Am I saying this well?”

FeelingsTruthFunMistakesNationalismExcessConsistencyModerationExceptionalismFlamboyance
Book:The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
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“I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives, Henle's loops and all. Every glistening egg is a memento mori.”

DeathNatureFailureEvolutionBirthWasteAbundanceExcessFecundity
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“Even years from now, once I've stopped drinking, I will never stop trusting extremes. I will always believe that anything worth having is worth having in excess. The good things are worth hoarding until you have a cookie-fat ass, sex-aching loins, joy that fires through you like popping popcorn, or love, the weakness at the sight of some boy who makes your chest ache like indigestion. If it's good for you, it ought to be good for you in any amount, and you should track down every available bit of it. And if it's toxic, if it turns your liver into a hard little rock of scar tissue, or curls your memory at the edges like something burned in a fire, or makes your stomach flop, or your mind ache, or your personality contorted, you shouldn't buy into the bullshit about temperance.”

Too MuchExtremesExcessBlack And WhiteWorthModerationPassionate LifeExtremeToo Much Of A Good ThingExcessivenessHoardToo LittleLack Of Moderation
Book:Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
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“Having beef with someone is unnecessary and avoidable. Whatever the issue, if not positive, it is an opportunity to cut the excess fat from an unhealthy dietary network. Simply excuse yourself from the table of negativity and lean forward in peace.”

QuotesOpportunityPeaceIssuesPositivityExcessNegativityConfrontationUnhealthyDietStrugglesBeefNetwork
Book:From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence
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“I have heard that, with some persons, temperance – that is, moderation – is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent’s authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity to taste, and try the effect of what has been so lauded and enjoyed by others, so strictly forbidden to himself – which curiosity would generally be gratified on the first convenient opportunity; and the restraint once broken, serious consequences might ensue.”

ChildrenEvilParentsControlExcessModerationUpbringingTemperanceAbstinence
Author:Anne Brontë
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“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, "Sir, I am your most humble servant." You are not his most humble servant. You may say, "These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times." You don't mind the times ... You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly.”

LanguageExpressionThoughtExcessModerationCantAppropriateness
Book:The Life of Johnson, Vol 4
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“And it seemed fitting both for Andrei, and hypothetically the creators of the film, that when he got up to leave in the middle of it, he did so as an ode to the film. A statement of departure that said: 'If you made the movie for the reason I think you did, perhaps you wouldn’t be offended that I left the damn place and decided to chase after life. Inspiration is unlimited, but time is not. Thank you. Goodbye!' He left the poet’s book in the seat beside him, took his popcorn and soda, and exited the cinema the way the writers would have wanted.”

LifeArtInspirationMotivationDisciplineEncouragementExcessMoviesGluttonyBinging
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“It is of our nature to exceed ourselves. Overflowing the mesaure is built into what we are. So, too, is rejoicing in this superabundance for its own sake. Yet too lavish an excess, like too vaulting an ambition, may lead us to overreach ourselves and bring ourselves to nothing. Like Lady Macbeh, one can forget that constraints (the demands of kinship or hospitality, for example) are costitutive of the self, not simply obstacles to its expression.”

AmbitionExcessNothingConstraintsOurselvesMeasureSuperabundance
Book:Tragedy
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“Surely little remained of the Puritan legacy of prudish rectitude, he thought: surely this was now a country of excess, gluttony, lust, and sloth; surely this had grown into a land where obesity reigned and even the poor moved ponderously down the street on big thighs that rubbed fatly together. What had become of the pilgrims' gaunt and stingy oversight? He knew in part it was the visionary genius of enterprising men, but such entrepreneurs were only the tools of a hungry culture. For the descendants of those gray, upright pioneers had cherished cravings for beef patties with ketchup, deep-fried chicken and vats of ice cream, chemically scented and dyed all the colors of the rainbow, and billions upon billions of gallons of soda. Their thirst had never been quite slaked and so they never finished drinking; and this was the market in all its streamlined functionality—which, precisely where the supply and the demand curves crossed, had swiftly produced a nation of paralyzed giants, fallen across their couches much as soldiers on the field of battle, their arteries hard, their softened hearts failing. The market made a fool of you by giving you what you wanted. But this did not make him resent it; it merely earned his respect. From the day you were born you were called upon to discern what to choose.”

AmericaExcessRestraintMarketsGluttonyJunk FoodEntrepreneursSupply And DemandPuritanism
Book:How the Dead Dream
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“Min Herres behagelige Sendebrev af 27de Dag udi Glugmaanet, (a) haver jeg den anden Dag af Blidemaaned (b) bekommet. Min Herre forlanger at vide hvordan Tilstanden nu omstunder er ved Academiet, om man tilkommende Sommer kand vente, at see nogen, at blive ophøyed paa Doctor-Trappen, (c) enten udi den Guddommelige Kundskab (d), udi de verdslige Love, (e) eller udi Lægekunsten (f). Min Herre ønsker ogsaa at vide, hvor mange Mestere af Verdens Viisdom (g) i Fior bleve skabte (h), hvor mange Laurbærkronede Personer (i), Item, hvo dette Aar er Rector og Decanus, det er den høye Skoles Forstander og den verdslige Viisdoms Høvidsmand, iligemaade, hvad Nyt som ellers er forefaldet udi den lærde Fristad (k). (a) Januario.(b) Februario.(c) Doctor-Graden.(d) Theologien.(e) Injure.(f) Medicinen.(g) Magistri Philosophiae.(h) Creerede.(i) Baccalaurei.(k) Republica literaria.”

FoolishIronyMeaninglessExcessLinguisticsKeep It SimpleBad WritingLaconicScholarsPseudo IntellectualsPompRhetoricsPoor Understanding
Book:Epistler
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“Roadkill Rocker by Stewart Stafford I ordered madness on toast. My reflection pooled on the floor, splashed around in it for ages, until room service imploded the door. “Time to pay the piper, son,” it growled — “It’s my record label’s tab, you’ll find out!” They clay-pigeoned my sandwich at me, my last morsel before getting kicked out. Housekeeping surveyed the wreckage, this one-man party animal slunk to his feet: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” “Yeah — I’m roadkill from down the street!” © 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

SatireExcessRock And RollSelf DestructionHangoverSurreal PoetryParty AnimalThe Morning AfterGrit LitUrban Gothic
Author:Stewart Stafford
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