Excess Quotes

“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!”
― Mae West

“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.”
― Ayn Rand

“Too much of anything could destroy you, Simon thought. Too much darkness could kill, but too much light could blind.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

“I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”
― Plato, The Republic

“The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“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.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Johnson, Vol 4

“The bigger the better; in everything.”
― Freddie Mercury

“America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.”
― John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

“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.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“I used to do drugs, but don't tell anyone because it'll ruin my image.”
― Courtney Love

“Once one becomes a man, he can and must make his own decisions. But I do offer warning. Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law

“Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
For what they have not, that which they possess
They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.”
― William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece

“There are those people who can eat one piece of chocolate, one piece of cake, drink one glass of wine. There are even people who smoke one or two cigarettes a week. And then there are people for whom one of anything is not even an option.”
― Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir

“Most of us try to do too much because we are secretly afraid we will not be able to do anything at all.”
― Rick Aster, Fear of Nothing

“Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution

“For the love of God, unless you’re prepping for Rigoletto at the Met, go easy on the eyeliner.”
― Cheryl Cory

“The man who shuns and fears everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger becomes foolhardy. Similarly the man who indulges in pleasure and refrains from none becomes licentious (akolastos); but if a man behaves like a boor (agroikos) and turns his back on every pleasure, he is a case of insensibility. Thus temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency and preserved by the mean.”
― Aristotle , The Nicomachean Ethics

“No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.”
― Knut Hamsun

“Excess makes the heart grow fonder...”
― John Balance

“Under the present conditions, everything conspires to obscure the basic movement that tends to restore wealth to its function, to gift-giving, to squandering without reciprocation.”
― Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Volume I: Consumption

“Exceed not thy actions, but limit not thy mind.”
― Gary Davis

“A couple of years ago my sister Judy and I were each given a box of truffles. The tiny print said two pieces contained 310 calories and there were six pieces in each box. We were sitting on the bus headed downtown, quietly doing our calculations: Judy was dividing by two and I was multiplying by three. When she realized what I was doing, a look came over her face that is hard to describe. 'I lost all hope for you' she says now.”
― Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir

“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?”
― George Saunders, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

“Meanwhile, while I professed to
be making a farce of taste, I was still following taste’s lone remaining edict:
you could like bad things without embarrassment, so long as you conceded
their badness. You could sin, as long as you made clear which god you
prayed to.”
― Emily Mester, American Bulk: Essays on Excess

“We understand no love
that is not in excess”
― Urvi Kumbhat

“The path of excess doesn't always lead to the palace of wisdom. Sometimes it just leads to the Betty Ford Clinic.”
― Arvo Zylo

“The path of excess leads to the palace of excess.”
― Arvo Zylo