A Quote by Pythagoras

Do not spend in excess like one who is careless of what is good, nor be miserly; the mean is best in every case.

Pythagoras

Quote Topics

Best Careless Case Every Excess Good Like Mean Nor Spend

Quote Author

Pythagoras
Greek - Mathematician
582 BC - 497 BC

Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that's next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can't. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote. That's why I rate that second - it's because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. There's less room in it for trash.

William Faulkner

Moral virtue is ... a mean between two vices, that of excess and that of defect, and ... it is no small task to hit the mean in each case, as it is not, for example, any chance comer, but only the geometer, who can find the center of a given circle.

Aristotle

Many reasonable prosecutors have come to the conclusion that they would have brought such a case that Hillary Clinton was extremely careless in the handling of national security information. I would have brought such a case and I would have won such a case. And I've prosecuted cases like that in my years in the Justice Department.

Rudy Giuliani

If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.

Aristotle

In order to create an image almost similar to that of a pencil case standing up and walking, I try to eliminate all excess by cutting. I have the feeling that this process (of "cutting off") is linked in some way to "elegance". Elegance and so-called "eliminating excess", or the beauty that remains after excess has beeen eliminated...

Yohji Yamamoto

From a systematic standpoint, I think that capitalism is the best system. I can spend a lot of time explaining why I like communism, but it is actually not a good solution. Nor is socialism. So, capitalism is the right model.

Ben Horowitz

Take good care of the things you have. Careless people spend more for a given standard of living.

Catherine Crook de Camp

Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.

Marcus Aurelius

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.

Francis Bacon

Where there is Love and Wisdom, there is neither Fear nor Ignorance. Where there is Patience and Humility, there is neither Anger nor Annoyance. Where there is Poverty and Joy, there is neither Cupidity nor Avarice. Where there is Peace and Contemplation, there is neither Care nor Restlessness. Where there is the Fear of God to guard the dwelling, there no enemy can enter. Where there is Mercy and Prudence, there is neither Excess nor Harshness.

Francis of Assisi

But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.

John Paul Stevens

Is not the action of nature like the stretching of a bow? The high, it pulls down; the low, it lifts up; It takes from what is in excess In order to make good of what is deficient. Who can take what they have in excess and offer it to others?

Laozi

Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life.

Aristotle

There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion.