Thomas Paine Quotes

Moderation is never something I've been good at.

I can't do anything in moderation.

… vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little.

One's too many, and a hundred's not enough.

Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure; nothing more bondage than too much liberty.

I'm a really extreme person, and balance is probably the hardest thing for me to maintain.

Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.

Temper your enjoyments with prudence, lest there be written on your heart that fearful word 'satiety.'

Let there be a door to thy mouth, that it may be shut when need arises, and let it be carefully barred, that none may rouse thy voice to anger, and thou pay back abuse with abuse.

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.

Gluttony is wrong. It's wasteful.

A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn't exactly been one of moderation.

I was not created to be occupied by eating delicious foods like tied up cattle.

Candor and generosity, unless tempered by due moderation, leads to ruin.

I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than the excess in too much; the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death.

I can be a bit extreme. I'll spend too much time running round the park, doing yoga and drinking green tea. I can get a bit obsessive. I have to rein it in sometimes.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity" and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

Keep to the middle if you wish to keep moderation. The mid way is the safe way. Moderation abides in the mean, and moderation is virtue. Every abiding place outside the bounds of moderation is only exile to the wise man.

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

I don't understand moderation. I'm not the nice guy.

Why is humanity so excessive in the way it does things? The golden mean seems out of fashion.