Quotessence
Home / Topics / Excess Quotes

Excess Quotes

Browse 807 quotes about Excess.

Related topics

IfsMenPeopleWorldMeanThinkingHumansVirtueModerationWayKnowsNeedsMayLittlesMindShouldTwoBodyDoeWellsGivingToo MuchArtFeelingsSometimesVicesLongEffectsKindEvilGovernmentReasonStatesWantWealthCausesEnergyEnoughHas BeensPersonsSufferingUseYearsIndividualLooksPassionSpiritTryingYoungAmericaBalanceCasesDeficiencyEndsExtremesFirstsGreedIdeasLawMoralWould BeCertainChildrenCountryEyeInspirationalJoyLifePopulationSelfTermValuesAbuseAgeDesireFactsFeelsFormLightOrderProduceSaidSeemsSoulStillsViolentWholeWritingBookDangerDangerousDrinkingEarthEasyEconomyFallGrowthHandsHeartLibertymore

Excess Quotes

“Cycle of the Midnight Ape by Stewart Stafford Janus creature of paradox, Liquid hostage of conscience, Swinging midnight's ape, On cartwheel chandeliers. This being's bender reveal — Of the existential, maddening itch, To sling aside life’s burdens, And slake its raging thirst. An anthropological anomaly, Naked in its contradictions, A déjà vu loop grinds on, This peerless hellraiser royal. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

IsolationParadoxExcessHuman ConditionSurrealismSocial CommentaryCoping MechanismPhilosophical PoetryComedy And TragedyParty Animals
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“Strawberries sat abandoned in the fields by season's end, so ripe as to be barely solid, warm as heart's blood. Ambrosia, they call that variety, the food of gods. But the hubris of excess has mortal consequences. You can go blind, mad, drown in red. The second nature of strawberries is a sugar that turns to rot. They reappeared one by one as I vomited, shapeless and no longer sweet, those little, used, red hearts.”

ExcessStrawberriesHubrisRotBleeding Hearts
Book:Land of Milk and Honey
Create image

“Natalie, as hard as you might find this to believe, I respect you in addition to loving you as your father. I would like the part of you that makes you "you" to survive this adventure. I don't want an automaton with a superficial resemblance to my daughter. I want you to realize all this pissing around with radical politics and campouts with dropouts is not a long-term strategy. I understand you feel guilty about having so much when everyone else has so little, but what good do you think it does to turn your back on reality? You can't wish inequality away.”

RealityNaturalPoorRichRespectGuiltInequalityExcess
Book:Walkaway
Create image

“We classify the positive traits that protect us from excess as strengths of temperance. What are the types of excess of special concern? Hatred—against which forgiveness and mercy protect us. Arrogance—against which humility and modesty protect us. Short-term pleasure with long-term costs—against which prudence protects us. And destabilizing emotional extremes of all sorts—against which self-regulation protects us.”

HateHumilityForgivenessMercyArroganceExcessModestyPrudenceTemperance
Book:Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification
Create image

“When we talk of flood control, we usually think of dams and deeper river channels, to impound the waters or hurry their run-off. Yet neither is the ultimate solution, simply because floods are caused by the flow of water downhill. If the hills are wooded, that flow is checked. If there is a swamp at the foot of the hills, the swamp sponges up most of the excess water, restores some of it to the underground water supply and feeds the remainder slowly into the streams. Strip the hills, drain the boglands, and you create flood conditions inevitably. Yet that is what we have been doing for years.”

IfsThinkingYearsHas BeensRunningWaterFeetConditionsSolutionsFlowRiversUltimateDeeperWoodsHillsStreamsExcessFloodDrainsSwampsSpongesProblems And SolutionsSolution To A ProblemDams
Author:Hal Borland
Create image

“Advertizing, television and film all wield mighty powers to visually seduce us, while much fine art leaves us indifferent, confused or, at worst, repulsed. There is a desperate need for creative Christians to redeem the visual arena from both forms of excess, cutting through all the false glamour, tawdry baseness and dense obfuscation.”

NeedsArtChristianFilmFormCultureChristianityCreativeCuttingWorstTelevisionFineConfusedVisualsDesperateExcessIndifferentArenaGlamourFine ArtsDenseSeducingBasenessObfuscation
Author:John Walford
Create image

“Most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their selfish consumer society and empire. Yet I suspect...they do not care. They don’t want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins, the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans, or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is therefore welcomed and appreciated.”

WantHumansLooksDoneBodyGovernmentCareFacesUsedSufferingNamesInjusticeSelfishFormerConsumersCorporateUpsetEmpiresSuspectsExcessFlagsCensorshipVeteranAppreciatedBrutalityManufacturingCoffinsDesertedHuman Suffering
Author:Curtis White
Create image

“Virtues are in the middle, the royal way about which the saintly elder (Saint Basil the Great) said, "Travel on the royal way and count the miles." As I said, the virtues are at the midpoint between excess and laxness. That is why it is written, "Do not turn to the right or the left" (Prov 4:27) but travel on the "royal way" (Num. 20:17). Saint Basil also says, "The person who does not allow his thoughts to incline towards excess or deprivation but directs it to the midpoint, that of virtue, is upright in heart."”

WayHeartPersonsDoeSaidTruthTurnsLeftVirtueWrittenMiddleSaintMilesExcessRoyalEldersDeprivationInclineBasil
Author:Dorotheus of Gaza
Create image

“The money economy thus leaves a large ecological footprint, defined as the amount of land and resources required to meet a typical consumer's needs. For example, with only about 4% of the world's population, the United States, the largest money economy, consumes in excess of one-quarter of the world's energy and materials and generates in excess of 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.”

WorldNeedsStatesEnergyUnitedUnited StatesEconomyLandExampleMaterialsAmountPercentResourcesPopulationDefinedConsumersGasQuartersExcessConsumerismTypicalEmissionsEcologicalFootprintOverconsumptionGreenhousesGreenhouse GasesEcological Footprints
Author:Stuart L. Hart
Create image

“The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.”

IfsMenSelfReasonNationsCausesInterestChurchTroubleCapacityClaimsSpeciesDuesDrivenContraryDisasterDevotionConclusionUrgesExcessAggressionTribesPreservationSelf InterestSelf PreservationDetrimentalCredo
Author:Arthur Koestler
Create image

“The faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess.”

WritingFaultsExcellenceExcessGreat Author
Book:The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria
Create image

“I am in Rome! Oft as the morning ray Visits these eyes, waking at once I cry, Whence this excess of joy? What has befallen me? And from within a thrilling voice replies, Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy thoughts Rush on my mind, a thousand images; And I spring up as girt to run a race!”

MindArtEyeRunningJoyVoiceRaceMorningCryThousandSpringBusyWakingRaysRomeExcessThrillingThese Eyes
Book:The poetical works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb, and Kirke White: complete in one volume
Create image

“One of the most admirable effects of Holy Communion is to preserve the soul from sin, and to help those who fall through weakness to rise again. It is much more profitable, then, to approach this divine Sacrament with love, respect, and confidence, than to remain away through an excess of fear and scrupulosity.”

SoulHelpingChristianFallSinEffectsDivineHolyApproachWeaknessPreservesExcessCommunionSacramentsProfitableAdmirableLove RespectHoly Communion
Author:Ignatius of Loyola
Create image

“The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.”

IfsMenTryingGovernmentTodayGrowthInterestNaturalWealthBusinessProgressMovementHe ManWindSucceedAuthorityJudgmentViolentReformExcessSteadyRegulationProvokingReapAccompanyWhirlwind
Author:Theodore Roosevelt
Create image

“It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.”

WayCharacterPassionEvilEnergyDifficultImaginationFireDangerousThousandViolentControlledExcessDiscretionFirmnessNo Energy
Book:Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Create image

“I've always been aware of the otherworld, of spirits that exist in that twilight place that lies in the corner of our eyes, of fairie and stranger things still that we spy only when we're not really paying attention to them, whispers and flickering shadows, here one moment, gone the instant we turn our heads for a closer look. But I couldn't always find them. And when I did, for a long time I thought they were only this excess of imagination that I carry around inside me, that somehow it was leaking out of me into the world.”

WorldLooksLongStillsMomentsEyeSpiritLyingTurnsImaginationAttentionGoneLong TimeShadowCornersStrangerPay AttentionInstantExcessTwilightSpy
Author:Charles de Lint
Create image

“It is so very easy and so very pleasant, too, to read only books which lead to nothing, light and interesting books, and the more the better, that it is almost as difficult to wean ourselves from it as from the habit of chewing tobacco to excess, or of smoking the whole time, or of depending for stimulus upon tea or coffee or spirits.”

BookWholeLightSpiritEasyDifficultInterestingHabitCoffeeTeaPleasantSmokingExcessStimulusTobaccoChewingInteresting BookChewing Tobacco
Author:Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
Create image

“The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!”

MenFeelsLongTwoWholeSeemsWould BeAgeRememberReadingEffortEmotionToo MuchDrinkingAdmireExcessThoroughBruisesStimulation
Book:Letters, conversations, and recollections [ed. by T.Allsop].
Create image

“With regard to Banks, they have taken too deep and too wide a root in social transactions, to be got rid of altogether, if that were desirable. They have a hold on public opinion, which alone would make it expedient to aim rather at the improvement, than the suppression of them. As now generally constituted, their advantages whatever they be, are outweighed by the excesses of their paper emissions, and the partialities and corruption with which they are administered.”

IfsSocialOpinionTakenPaperAdvantageRootsRegardAimCorruptionWideImprovementExcessDesirableBankingPublic OpinionEmissionsTransactionsSuppressionToo DeepPartiality
Author:James Madison
Create image

“It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.”

WaySoulEyeEarthJoyPoetryTearsEvidenceWitnessParadiseMelancholyNervesExcessImperfectDispositionDelayGlimpseExquisiteTombsSplendorImperfect Things
Author:Charles Baudelaire
Create image