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

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”
― Anais Nin

“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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

“Satire in extreme times is risky. Choose any excess, think you’re wildly exaggerating, and it’s most likely to have been true.

(Sympathetic murmur) I know.”
― Margaret Atwood, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

“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.”
― Lydia Millet, How the Dead Dream