Extremes Quotes

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Perfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur.

Nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know good in anything until you have torn the heart out of it by excess.

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.

The greatest flood has the soonest ebb; the sorest tempest the most sudden calm; the hottest love the coldest end; and from the deepest desire oftentimes ensues the deadliest hate.

Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; qualities that are in excess are so much at variance with our feelings that they are impalpable: we do not feel them, though we suffer from their effects.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.

Men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called "the act of love," or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality. We seldom find a mean between these two extremes.

The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy.

These violent delights have violent ends.

I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.

Moderation sees itself as beautiful; it is unaware that in the eye of the immoderate it appears black and sober and consequently ugly-looking.

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.

Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

All extremes of feeling are allied to madness.

The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.

There is no working middle course in wartime.

Let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible. . . . For this is the way of happiness.

Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

All extremes are dangerous.