Excess

Famous quotes containing the word excess:

“Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)

“For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure—tangible material prosperity in this world—is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)

“There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,—all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)