Michelangelo
Sculptor, Painter, Architect, Poet
"The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone."
Excess quotes
Excess
305 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
George Will
Political Commentator, Author
"Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses."
Jean Baudrillard
Philosopher, Sociologist
"The obese is in a total delirium. For he is not only large, of a size opposed to normal morphology: he is larger than large. He no longer makes sense in some distinctive opposition, but in his excess, his redundancy."
Hippocrates
Physician
"Everything in excess is opposed to nature."
Aristotle
Philosopher
"Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses."
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Excess quotes (page 1 of 16)
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"The sweetest things become the most bitter by excess."
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"Every relationship of domination, of exploitation, of oppression is by definition violent, whether or not the violence is expressed by drastic means. In such a relationship, dominator and dominated alike are reduced to things- the former dehumanized by an excess of power, the latter by a lack of it. And things cannot love."
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"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience."
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"Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason."
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"Excess is part of my nature. Dullness is a disease. I really need danger and excitement. I'm never scared of putting myself out on a limb."
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"Poverty makes people sub-human Excess of wealth makes people inhuman"
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"All excesses are inimical to Nature. It is safer to proceed a little at a time, especially when changing from one regimen to another."
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"I'm a conservative because I believe we're here on this earth to do a little more than crawl through life, comfortable in the cradle of government excess and oblivious to the duties required to keep this republic standing."
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"Sadistic excess attempts to reach roughly and by harshness what art reaches by fineness."
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"There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy."
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"Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks."
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"Definition of tragedy: A hero destroyed by the excess of his virtues"
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"A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them."
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"Do not spend in excess like one who is careless of what is good, nor be miserly; the mean is best in every case."
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"The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange."
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"Writing means revealing oneself to excess."
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"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess"
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"Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition."
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"A stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow creature, that makes him stammer."
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"The sage avoids extremity, excess, and extravagance."
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