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Excess is more than necessary

• Excess: An amount of something that is more than necessary, permitted, or desirable. Oxford Dictionary
• Excess: An amount that is more than acceptable, expected, or reasonable. Cambridge Dictionary
• Excess: Behavior that is considered wrong because it goes beyond what is usual, normal, or proper.  Merriam Webster
• Greed,  Abundance,  Gluttony,  Waste,  Balance,  Moderation,  Simple living

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Ours is a culture based on excess

• We are no longer in a state of growth; we are in a state of excess. We are living in a society of excrescence. The boil is growing out of control, recklessly at cross purposes with itself, its impacts multiplying as the causes disintegrate. Jean Baudrillard
• America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death. John Piper
• Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life — its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness — conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. Susan Sonrag

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There is a common belief that too much of anything is bad

• I hold this as a rule of life: Too much of anything is bad. Terence

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Excess can lead to ill health

• Excess of meats bringeth sickness. Bible
• A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health. Clarence Day
• Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it. Horace
• Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities and the fountain of all our diseases. As fire extinguished by an excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by an intemperate diet. Robert Burton
• Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort. Charles Dickens
• They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. William Shakespeare
• Tis not the eating, nor ’tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess. John Selden
• Health

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Excess usually leads to waste

• The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity. Thomas Love Peacock
• Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless. Thomas Alva Edison
• We do need a ‘new economy,’ but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy. Wendell Berry
• Wilful waste brings woeful want. Thomas Fuller
• Waste

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Excess rarely brings lasting happiness

• The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. Voltaire
• Happiness

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Excess in youth is often paid for later in life

• The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later. Charles Caleb Colton
• Youth

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In excess, pleasures become punishments

• The excess if delight palls our appetites rather than pleases. Wellins Calcott
• If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please. Epictetus
• Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition. Seneca
• So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments. Seneca
• Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains. Democritus
• Pleasure

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Excess is contrary to the natural world

• Everything in excess is opposed to nature. Hippocrates
• Follow the wisdom provided by nature. Everything in moderation – sunlight, water, nutrients. Too much of a good thing will topple your structure. Vivian Elisabeth Glyck

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An excess of even a good thing can be harmful

• Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess. Brandon Sanderson
• Even nectar is poison if taken to excess. Hindu Proverb
• Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. Plato
• Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow. Honore de Balzac
• The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick. Joe Abercrombie

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Even excessive virtue can actually be a vice …

• The excess of virtue is a vice. Greek Proverb
• Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! Charles Dickens
• Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. Adam Smith
• The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
• Virtue,  Vice

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… including virtues like modesty, generosity, courage, patience and courtesy

• Candor and generosity, unless tempered by due moderation, leads to ruin. Tacitus
• It is true that excessive modesty is by no means an undiluted good and needs a corrective. Many people are in the habit of brushing away their qualities and achievements with some kind of “it’s nothing really” reflex. Why shouldn’t we openly acknowledge and be proud of the good things about ourselves and what we’ve done? Antonia Macaro and Julian Baggini
• We must remember balance and moderation. Patience can be spiritually enriching and virtuous… but when taken in excess, it turns to procrastination, the poison of inaction. Steve Maraboli
• An excess of courtesy is discourtesy. Japanese Proverb
• Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage. Plutarch
• Modesty,  Generosity,  Courage, Patience

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Excessive power corrupts

• 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
• Power

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Excessive thought stifles action

• When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy. Salman
• Action

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Excessive fear brings dread and powerlessness

• Anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful situations. But in some cases, it becomes excessive and can cause sufferers to dread everyday situations. Susan Heitler, Ph.D.
• As many people die from an excess of timidity as from bravery. Norman Mailer
• Excessive fear is always powerless. Aeschylus
• I recognized that it was excessive fear and self-doubt that were the greatest detractors of personal genius. It broke my heart to see students know the answers, yet lack the courage to act on the answer. Often in the real world, it’s not the smart who get ahead, but the bold. Robert T. Kiyosaki
• When fear is excessive it can make many a man despair. Saint Thomas Aquinas
• Fear

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Excessive ego leads to arrogance, greed and often disaster

• We need to watch that such healthy recognition does not slide into vanity, excessive pride and an inflated sense of importance, which reflect back to us a distorted image of ourselves and do nothing to promote flourishing. Antonia Macaro and Julian Baggini
• The world is burning in the fire of desire, in greed, arrogance and excessive ego. Sri Guru Granth Sahib
• Pride and excess bring disaster for man. Xun Zi
• Transcending the ego,  Arrogance,  Greed

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Excessive doing leads to non-productive busyness

• 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
• Some are very busy and yet do nothing. English Proverb
• Love of bustle is not industry. Seneca
• Don’t mistake activity with achievement. John Wooden
• Busyness

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Excessive hope can lead to pain

• Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain. Samuel Johnson
• Hope,  Pain

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Excessive money addiction leads to ill health

• A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health. Clarence Day
• Addiction

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Excessive wealth leads to covetousness

• Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness. Christopher Marlowe
• 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. Aristotle
• Wealth

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Excessive effort can be counterproductive

• Excessive effort can also result from impatience or exaltation, two states that lead nowhere. If you begin climbing a high mountain at a run, your lungs will soon force you to stop. Matthieu Ricard
• There’s a concept in Taoism, “wei wu wei”, which is often translated as “action without action” or “effortless doing”. I prefer to think of it more in the sense of “action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort”. Leo Babauta
• Effort

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Excessive truth can lead to anger

• As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. Josh Billings
• Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess. Walter Savage Landor
• Truth,  Anger

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Excessive policies and procedures strangle creativity and initiative

• With a culture of trust, you don’t need all those excessive policies and procedures. The culture becomes the reinforcer. If someone gets out of line, the culture brings them back in line or weeds them out. Stephen Covey
• Creativity,  Initiative

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Excessive change can overstretch the capacity to adapt

• If nothing succeeds like success, it is equally true that nothing fails like excess. Because change requires moving beyond our comfort zone, it is best initiated in small and manageable increments. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• Adaptability

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Excessive information can confuse

• In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on. Criss Jami
• Confusion

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Excessive passion and desire can do harm

• Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one–through their excess. Christian Nestell Bovee
• It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil–to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one–through their excess. Christian Nestell Bovee
• The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess. Christian Nestell Bovee
• Passion

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Excessive organising leads to inflexibility and nit-picking

• Organising often becomes an end rather than a means to a greater ends. Tremendous time can be spent organising rather than producing. Applied in excess, the strength of organising becomes a weakness. We can become over structured, nitpicking and inflexible. Stephen Covey
• Being organised, Flexibility

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Excessive focus on the future blinds us to the joys in the present

• If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfilment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to ‘make it.’ You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now. Eckhart Tolle
• The future,  Live in the present

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Excessive emotion can overwhelm

• Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not. Xenophon
• Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow. Honore de Balzac
• Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps. William Blake
• Emotion

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Excessive clinging to ideas and beliefs can be dangerous

• 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
• Closed-mindedness,  Belief

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Excessive viewing of porn can create dissatisfaction with the real thing

• Excessive exposure to the incredible variety of naked bodies that you see in porn makes men feel permanently dissatisfied with their wives’ bodies. Rabbi Shmuley
• Pornography is the quadraphonics of sex. It adds a third and fourth track to the sexual act. It is the hallucination of detail that rules. Science has already habituated us to this microscopics, this excess of the real in its microscopic detail, this voyeurism of exactitude. Jean Baudrillard
• Pornography

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Many argue we should choose moderation and temperance over excess

• For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one’s strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases or preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues… This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended. Aristotle
• In everything the middle course is best: all things in excess bring trouble to men. Titus Maccius Plautus
• It’s all about balance. Balancing exercise, food, and life. No excesses. Helen M. Ryan
• Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide. Cicero
• Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• This I consider to be a valuable principle in life: Do nothing in excess. Terence
• Enough is as good as a feast. English Proverb
• It is better to rise from life as from a banquet – neither thirsty nor drunken. Aristotle
• Follow the wisdom provided by nature. Everything in moderation – sunlight, water, nutrients. Too much of a good thing will topple your structure. Vivian Elisabeth Glyck
• Moderation,  Temperance

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We should temper excess through embracing a simpler life

• Simplicity is practicing a lifestyle that is increasingly free of excess, greed, covetousness, and other forms of dependence on the things of this world. The Holy Spirit works through simplicity to release spiritual gifts such as hospitality, mercy, and giving… to live free of anxiety, and to better take care of this Earth. Siang-Yang Tan
• Simple living

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Just as there can be an excess in too much, there can also be an excess in too little

• I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than the excess in too much; the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death. Giacomo Casanova
• I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except myself. Giacomo Casanova
• Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. Voltaire

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The secret is to navigate the middle road between too much and too little

• The Eightfold Path which the Buddha preached in his first sermon is known as the Middle Path because it is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. Optimism tends to over-estimate the conditions of life, whereas pessimism tends to under- estimate them. To plunge on the one hand into the sensual excesses and pleasures of the ordinary worldly life is mean, degrading and useless. On the other hand. extravagant asceticism is also evil and useless. Self- indulgence tends to retard one’s spiritual progress and self- mortification to weaken one’s intellect. The Path is a Middle Way between the pairs of opposites. Venerable Ashin Thittila

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Others argue that excess, especially on occasion, can be a wonderful thing

• Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.  Somerset Maugham
• 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
• If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. Ayn Rand
• Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. Oscar Wilde
• Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. Anaïs Nin
• The bigger the better; in everything. Freddie Mercury
• The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom. William Blake
• Too much of a good thing can be wonderful! Mae West

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In fact, some argue that moderation as a virtue is greatly overrated

• Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit. Benjamin Disraeli
• Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. Oscar Wilde
• Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it. Francois de La Rochefoucauld
• Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance. Charles Caleb Colton
• Moderation: a median with no means, praised by those with no misfortunes, practiced by those with no merits. Bauvard
• Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s dilemma. It’s neither doing nor not doing. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence- sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It’s for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation…is lukewarm tea, the devil’s own brew. Dan Millman
• That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this — that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution. Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
• Let’s not quibble! I’m the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right. Tallulah Bankhead
• Moderation,  Virtue

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Progress, they say, has tended to come much more from excess than asceticism

• All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. Samuel Butler
• 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
• Progress

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For certain things, they argue, excess should be actively encouraged

• In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people’s wrath. Kahlil Gibran
• It’s a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation. Roberto Benigni
• A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. Thomas Paine

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Enthusiasm in excess is good as long as it doesn’t turn to addiction

• In a nutshell, the fundamental difference between excessive enthusiasm and addiction is that healthy enthusiasms add to life whereas addiction takes away from it. Mark Griffiths
• Addiction

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Overreaching can be an admirable form of excess

• Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses. George Will
• If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. Ayn Rand

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Being excessive in your principles is a good thing – or is it?

• A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. Thomas Paine
• Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. Will Durant
• Principles

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You are blessed in excess so you can give some away

• The reason that you are blessed in excess with anything is so that you can give it away to someone else in need. Dee Dee M. Scott

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Perhaps the answer to all this lies in being moderate in excess

• I am a fan of overdoing something, but not running it into the ground. They are complete opposites with only a fine line separating them. Criss Jami
• There is moderation even in excess. Benjamin Disraeli

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• A teetotaller is someone who practices moderation to excess.
• Never eat more than you can lift. Miss Piggy
• Never order food in excess of your body weight. Erma Bombeck
• Too much of a good thing can be wonderful! Mae West
• Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, margarita in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO what a ride!
• Vanity is often so excessive, that those who are compelled to walk on crutches would fain make us believe they are raised on stilts. Eliza Cook
• Cocaine is God’s way of saying that you’re making too much money. Robin Williams
• Confucius say happiness is a way station between too little and too much. Confucius
• Drinking too much coffee can cause a latte problems.
• Eulogy: Praise that’s too much and too late.
• I am certain there is too much certainty in the world. Michael Crichton
• I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it. Rodney Dangerfield
• Sex is like money; only too much is enough. John Updike
• Some is good, more is better, too much is just right. Great American Axiom
• Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough. Mark Twain
• That’s why I don’t talk. Because I talk too much. Joaquin Andujar
• The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little. Mark Twain
• There’s always somebody who is paid too much and taxed too little – and it’s always somebody else.   Cullen Hightower
• There’s too much blood in my caffeine system.
• Way too much coffee. But if it weren’t for the coffee, I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever.  David Letterman
• Whoever opined “Money can’t buy you happiness” obviously had far too much of the stuff.” David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

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