Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.

If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.

Little opportunities should be improved.

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.

The more you say the less people remember.

All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.

Had we not faults of our own we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self love.

The greater our dread of crosses the more necessary they are for us.

Faith is letting down our nets into the transparent deeps at the Divine command not knowing what we shall draw.

How different the peace of God from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of the conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God.

There are two principal points of attention necessary for the preservation of this constant spirit of prayer which unites us with God; we must continually seek to cherish it, and we must avoid everything that tends to make us lose it.

Pure love is in the will alone; it is no sentimental love, for the imagination has no part in it; it loves, if we may so express it, without feeling, as faith believes without seeing.

How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.

Simplicity is that grace which frees the soul from all unnecessary reflections upon itself.

Good taste rejects excessive nicety.

Temptations are a file which rub off much of the rust of our self-confidence.

You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I'll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being.

To lose one's self in reverie, one must be either very happy, or very unhappy. Reverie is the child of extremes.

It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.

Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.

Extremes, though contrary, have the like effects. Extreme heat kills, and so extreme cold: extreme love breeds satiety, and so extreme hatred; and too violent rigor tempts chastity, as does too much license.

I have such an extreme attitude about work, where I can just completely be derelict of my responsibilities and then when I am not derelict, I am completely indulged in it. I swing pretty wildly from the two extremes.

Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.

Extremes are dangerous.

Some people must go to extremes to get the world in balance for themselves. Some can't bear bright lights, so wherever they go they search for the dark; they turn the lights down, anything to sustain some level of comfort.

Bipartisanship helps to avoid extremes and imbalances. It causes compromises and accommodations. So let's cooperate.

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally.

We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.

We shall never be understood or respected by the English until we carry our individuality to extremes, and by asserting our independence, become of sufficient consequence in their eyes to merit a closer study than they have hitherto accorded us.

You can't just lecture the poor that they shouldn't riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available.

The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.

People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences.

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.

When you get to the extremes there is, sometimes, just the need where you have to stand up.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.