All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
I hold this as a rule of life: Too much of anything is bad.
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.''
Nothing in excess.
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.
Riches are for spending.
The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
To go too far is as bad as to fall short.
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.
We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.