This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man nor angels come into danger by it." - Francis Bacon
"The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused man to fall." - Francis Bacon
"Everything in excess is opposed to nature... To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy." - Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL
"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, though from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort, as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." - James Madison
"Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may; indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings." - Joseph Addison
"A wise man will carefully avoid excess, lest he give the impression of haughtiness." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors. They taste no real or substantial pleasure; but, resembling so many brutes, with eyes always fixed on the earth, and intent upon their loaden tables, they pamper themselves in luxury and excess." - Plato NULL
"The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea." - Richard Hofstadter
"The body, too, with yesterday’s excess burden’d and tired shall the pure soul depress." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL
"Nothing in excess." - Solon NULL
"The Way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in the inner feeling of emptiness. Be serene in the oneness of things, nor in the inner feeling of emptiness. Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves. When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very efforts fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other, you will never know Oneness." - Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an
"Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders a man happy." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibition, instabilities and it always balances them." - Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
"For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts." - C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
"The policy of excessive protectionism is like a habit-forming drug. Nations once indulging in it go on from excess to excess; and the appetite increases. But the end of unrestrained indulgence is disaster. Economic nationalism and protectionism spell disaster for the world as well as for the nation...Men will fight before they starve. Uneconomic trade barriers forge the thunderbolts of war." - Francis Bowes Sayre
"What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
"Cultivate fine taste and discrimination in your choice of things. Get a right idea of values. Material possessions that you do not need and cannot use may be only an encumbrance. Let your guiding rule be not how much but how good. A thing you do not want is dear at any price. Avoid surplus age. Choose things that express your own individuality. You must possess your things or they will possess you. Look for quality rather than quantity. Unnecessary possessions bring unnecessary care and responsibility. Excess is waste. Have an occasional stocktaking and eliminate unsparingly." - Grenville Kleiser
"Thrift is a habit. A habit is a thing you do unconsciously or automatically, without thought. We are ruled by our habits... The habit of thrift proves your power to rule your own psychic self. You are the captain of your soul. You are able to take care of yourself, and then out of the excess of your strength you produce a surplus." - Harvey A. Blodgett
"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. " - James Madison
"The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and our senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor, which they often go withotu altogether, so hat they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxieties that people in all classes suffer, and by which the human soul is constantly tormented: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided nearly all of them if only we had adhered to the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us. " -
"The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and our senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor, which they often go without altogether, so that they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxieties that people in all classes suffer, and by which the human soul is constantly tormented: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided nearly all of them if only we had adhered to the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us. " - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance." - John Keats
"The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all." - John Updike
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of demand. " - Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
"How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!" - Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
"Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number." - Michael Parenti
"While yearning for excess we lose the necessities." - Persian Proverbs
"It may be thought justifiable to require tests on animals of potentially life-saving drugs, but the same kinds of tests are used for products like cosmetics, food coloring, and floor polishes. Should thousands of animals suffer so that a new kind of lipstick or floor wax can be put on the market? Don't we already have an excess of most of these products? Who benefits from their introduction, except the companies that hope to profit from them? " - Peter Singer
"Of all faults the greatest is the excess of impious terror, dishonoring divine grace. He who despairs wants love, wants faith; for faith, hope, and love are three torches which blend their light together, nor does the one shine without the other." - Pietro Metastasio, aka Metastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi
"Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage. " - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"It would be impossible to get through the kind of life that I have known without accumulating a vast unused stockpile of rage. Retaliation, though, was a luxury I could never afford. On the physical level I was too feeble. On any other I was not rich enough. I never dared to be rude to anyone. I never knew that I might not need him later. Long after fantasies of sexual excess had ceased to torment me, my imagination was inflamed by lurid day-dreams of having my revenge on the world." - Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt
"Faction is the excess and abuse of party." - Richard Chenevix, fully Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin
"There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty." - Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
"Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities, and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, a fire extinguished by excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet." - Robert Burton
"Thou art mighty and there is none among all Thou hast formed and created who can emulate Thy deeds and Thy power. Thou art mighty, and Thine is the completed power beyond change or alteration. Thou art mighty, and from the abundance of Thy might dost Thou pardon in the time of Thy wrath And forbearest long with sinners. Thou art mighty, and Thy mercies are upon all Thy creatures, yea upon all of them. "These are the mighty deeds which are from eternity."" - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"O loving, tender Word of God, You tell me: 'I have marked the path and opened the gate with My Blood; do not be negligent in following it, but take the same road which I, eternal Truth, have traced out with My Blood.' Arise, my soul, and follow your Redeemer, for no one can go to the Father but by Him. O sweet Christ, Christ-Love, You are the way, and the door through which we must enter in order to reach the Father." - Saint Catherine of Siena NULL
"Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
"Not only do we have to accept that God wounds us, but we have to accept to be wounded where He desires; we have to let God choose, because it is His right." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL
"You should not open your mouth except to express gratitude for benefits you have received, and never to mention your discontent." - Saint Vincent de Paul
"Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man." - Samuel Butler
"For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?" - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice-full, fair, and complete-and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt