excess quotes

Nothing in excess.

-Anonymous
Famous motto in  Antiquity.  According to Plato, the text was a temple inscription in Delphi (Hipparchus, 228e).

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying ina mean†it is a mean between twovices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, bk.2, ch.6,1006 (translated by Sir David Ross).

L'amoureux qui n'oublie pas quelquefois meurt par exce'  s, fatigue et tension de me  moire (tel Werther). The lover who does not forget sometimes dies from excess, fatigue, and the strain of memory (like Werther).

- Roland Barthes
  Fragments d'un discours amoureux.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

-William Blake
  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,'Proverbs of Hell'.

Though taste, though genius bless To some divine excess, Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole; What each, what all supply May court, may charm our eye, Thou, only thou can'st raise the meeting soul!

-William Collins
  Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Simplicity', no.8.

Il ne faut se permettre d'exce'  s qu'avec les gens qu'on veut quitter biento"  t. We should never permit ourselves to behave in excess except with those whom we will leave soon.

- Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos
  Les Liaisons dangereuses, letter10.