#excess

I have heard that, with some persons, temperance – that is, moderation – is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent’s authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity to taste, and try the effect of what has been so lauded and enjoyed by others, so strictly forbidden to himself – which curiosity would generally be gratified on the first convenient opportunity; and the restraint once broken, serious consequences might ensue. ↗

— Anne Brontë

#children #control #evil #excess #moderation

I told her stories. They were only a sentence long, each one of them. That’s all I knew how to find. So I told her broken stories. The little pieces of broken stories I could find. I told her what I could. I told her that the Global Alliance had issued more warnings about the possibility of total war if their demands were not met. I told her that the Emperor Nero, from Rome, had a giant sea built where he could keep sea monsters and have naval battles staged for him. I told her that there had been rioting in malls all over America, and that no one knew why. I told her that the red-suited Santa Claus we know — the regular one? — was popularized by the Coca-Cola Company in the 1930s. I told her that the White House had not confirmed or denied reports that extensive bombing had started in major cities in South America. I told her, “There’s an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we’re all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there’s nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams. ↗

— M.T. Anderson

#decline-of-civilization #excess #dreams

Excessive fear is always powerless. ↗

— Aeschylus

#always #excessive #fear #powerless

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#any #bear #excess #harder #joy

This I consider to be a valuable principle in life: Do no thing in excess. ↗

— Terence

#excess #i #life #principle #thing

Peace congresses often start by dealing with some of the less important questions in excessive detail, so at the end there is no time to discuss the most important problems. ↗

— Fredrik Bajer

#dealing #detail #discuss #end #excessive

For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight. ↗

— Aeschylus

#defense #excess #great #his #justice

When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen. ↗

— James Baker

#british #carbon #carbon dioxide #companies #dioxide

What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating. ↗

— Jean Anouilh

#excess #excessively #exhilarating #fun #long

After an unremitting and severe labour of two days, we returned to our old encampment with the loss of some of my horses, and my men excessively fatigued. ↗

— William Henry Ashley

#days #encampment #excessively #fatigued #horses