Excess

Solitude is very sad,
Too much company twice as bad.
~ William Allingham, from Blackberries Picked Off Many Bushes (1884).

We should know that too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing ... [We] need to set definite boundaries on our appetites.
~ William John Bennett, The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (1993).

Dip him in the river who loves water.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

Enough! or Too much.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man.
~ William Blake, There Is No Natural Religion (1788).

The search for happiness, when carried to the extreme, becomes a torture.
~ William Cowper Brann, in The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast, Vol. X (1919). As I Was Saying

Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity, but it serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment; therefore the principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (dissenting opinion), Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976)

Thrift has been explained as a check on impulse.
~ Willis H. (W.H.) Carothers, in Democracy in Reconstruction (1919). XI. Savings and Thrift

[T]oo much information often makes one pompous, and it's rather deadening.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, from On Writing; Critical Studies on Writing As an Art (1949).

I'll do what all have done before;
I think I shall -- and somewhat more.
~ William Combe, The Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of the Picturesque (1812).

Fanaticism the false fire of an overheated mind.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Conversation

Sometimes it can happen that you see everything in terms of music. It's like a fixation. You can't help it. I get that way every time I'm trying to work something out. But it's bad if you can't pull out of it. Nothing should be that dominating. If it is, it is perverted.
~ Bill Evans, Down Beat Magazine (1960).

A man who overindulges lives in a dream. He becomes conceited. He thinks the whole world revolves around him; and it usually does.
~ W.C. Fields, quoted in A Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1969).

If you can't say no, you can't expect to live within your income.
~ William Feather

Fanaticism is the child of false zeal and of superstition, the father of intolerance and of persecution.
~ John William Fletcher

Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.
~ William Lloyd Garrison, in William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story Of His Life Told By His Children, Volume I (1885). Chapter VIII: "The Liberator"--1831

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
~ William Gibson, Count Zero (March 1986).

It is a characteristic ... of the mischiefs which arise from financial prodigality, that they creep onwards with a noiseless and a stealthy step; that they commonly remain unseen and unfelt, until they have reached a magnitude absolutely overwhelming.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, Speech Before the House of Commons, Financial Statement of 1861 (15 April 1861).

Satiety makes sense despise
What superstition thought divine.
~ William Habington, Castara, 3rd edn. (1640). To Castara, Of True Delight

An excess of modesty is in fact an excess of pride, and more hurtful to the individual, and less advantageous to society, than the grossest and most unblushing vanity.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker, Volume II (1826). On The Qualifications Necessary For Success

There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker, Volume I (1826). On the Conversation of Authors (first published in the London Magazine; September 1820)

We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
~ William Hazlitt, in Sketches and Essays (1839). On Cant and Hypocrisy (written in 1828)

However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.
~ Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1791). Chapter 8

I don't know why I go to extremes.
~ Billy Joel, in The Essential Billy Joel (2001 album). I Go To Extremes

Go to no extremes in thought or act hereupon.
~ William Q. Judge, A Letter from W.Q. Judge to Dr. A. Keightley (4 January 1895).

If some countries have too much history, we have too much geography.
~ William Lyon Mackenzie King, Speech, Canadian House of Commons (18 June 1936).

Drunkenness is deplorably destructive, but her demurer sister Gluttony destroys an hundred to her one.
~ William Kitchiner, The Art Of Invigorating And Prolonging Life (1822). Peptic Precepts

Waste is not grandeur.
~ William Mason, from The English Garden, Book II (1772-82).

I have not been afraid of excess; excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938). Chapter 15

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.
~ William of Ockham

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Temperance

It is the overtakers who keep the undertakers busy.
~ William Ewart Pitts, The Observer (22 December 1963). Sayings of the Week

Excess is always wrong. Too much ornament is an evil -- too little, also.
~ William C. Preston, Eulogy on Hugh Swinton Legare, Delivered at Charleston SC (7 November 1843)

Dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake. ... During a recent landfill dig in Phoenix, I found newspapers dating from 1952 that looked so fresh you might read one over breakfast.
~ William Rathje, The Economist (8 September 1990).

A fanatic is always the fellow on the opposite side.
~ Will Rogers, quoted in Criswell Freeman The Wisdom of the West (1997).

I care so much about everything that I really care about nothing.
~ William Saroyan, Here Comes There Goes You Know Who (1961).

Avoid extremes: be moderate
In saving and in spending;
An equable and easy gait
Will win an easy ending ...
~ Robert William Service, Moderation

An overflow of good converts to bad.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II

Fierce extremes
In their continuances will not feed themselves.
~ William Shakespeare, King John

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act I, scene i

It out-herods Herod.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene ii

Not fearing death, nor shrinking for distress,
But always resolute in most extremes.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part I. Act IV, scene i

One more, and this the last:
So sweet was ne'er so fatal.
~ William Shakespeare, Othello

[S]uperfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act I, scene ii

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
~ William Shakespeare, King John. Act IV, scene ii

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV. Act III, scene ii

What need the bridge much broader than the flood?
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act I, scene i

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 135

You have too much respect upon the world:
They lose it that do buy it with much care.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

A man is sometimes hated for pride, when it was an excess of humility gave the occasion.
~ William Shenstone, in Works in Verse and Prose, Vol. II (1764). Essays on Men, Manners, and Things. On Reserve

Security is always seen as too much until the day it's not enough.
~ William H. Webster, Debate on National Security vs. Personal Liberty, University of California, Santa Barbara (3 March 2002).

It seems to me there is no sadder fate
Than to be doomed to loving overmuch.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Poems of Passion (1883). The Common Lot

People who try to do either all the giving or all the taking are equally likely to be unhappy and therefore unbalanced and therefore unsuccessful at whatever it is they want to do.
~ Amabel Williams-Ellis, The Art Of Being A Woman (1951)

All fanaticism is a strategy to prevent doubt from becoming conscious.
~ H.A. Williams, The True Wilderness (1965).

[C]eremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspected as it does religion.
~ William Wycherley, The Plain Dealer (1674). Act I, scene i

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