After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.
Excessive love in loathing ever ends.
Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.
I'm a child in that respect: able to live, physically speaking, on a crumb of anticipation for weeks at a time, but always in danger of crushing the waited-for event with the freight of my excessive hope.
Morris read through the letter. Was it a shade too fulsome? No, that was another law of academic life: it is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers.
Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one's strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases and preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues. This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.
Excessive severity misses its own aim.
There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world weary, will weary, and one day he suffocated through his excessive pity.
Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.
A hunter archer can also be out to shock by taking crazy shots. What makes his shots "crazy" is set by excessive risk, judged by hunting-archery standards, which would tend to draw agreement from knowledgeable observers.
If there is neither excessive wealth nor immoderate poverty in a nation, then justice may be said to prevail.
Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive.
Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.
Excessive administration secrecy. . . feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public's confidence in government.
I can't go more than 72 hours without shopping, but I don't think I'm excessive.
The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us.
Sometimes I take a while to get ready to go out. It's not excessive, but it takes me some time to find clean clothes that match.
No one ever lost out by excessive devotion to Christ.
Pleasure, so called, is the murderer of serious thought. This is the age of excessive amusement. Everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle!