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noun
Excess  n.  
1.
The state of surpassing or going beyond limits; the being of a measure beyond sufficiency, necessity, or duty; that which exceeds what is usual or proper; immoderateness; superfluity; superabundance; extravagance; as, an excess of provisions or of light. "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet,... Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." "That kills me with excess of grief, this with excess of joy."
2.
An undue indulgence of the appetite; transgression of proper moderation in natural gratifications; intemperance; dissipation. "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess." "Thy desire... leads to no excess That reaches blame."
3.
The degree or amount by which one thing or number exceeds another; remainder; as, the difference between two numbers is the excess of one over the other.
Spherical excess (Geom.), the amount by which the sum of the three angles of a spherical triangle exceeds two right angles. The spherical excess is proportional to the area of the triangle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Excess" Quotes from Famous Books



... last I reached the spot I had always loved the best on earth ever since I first saw it as a child, I fell on my knees and wept for sheer excess of joy. It was mine indeed; it belonged to me as no land or water had ever belonged to any ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... other diseases in regard to which excess in alcoholics acts as a powerful predisposing cause, such as gout, gravel, aneurism, paralysis, apoplexy, epilepsy, cystitis, premature incontinence of urine, erysipelas, spreading cellular inflammation, tendency of wounds and sores to gangrene, inability of the constitution ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... must have possessed, at least, more makers by two-thirds than either of those three countries. And this goes far to prove, moreover, that the Italian makers received extensive foreign patronage, their number being far in excess of that required to supply their own country's wants in the manufacture of Violins. Roger North, in his "Memoirs of Musick," evidences the demand for Italian Violins in the days of James II. He remarks: "Most of the young nobility and gentry ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... establishing new mail routes and requiring more expensive services on others and the increasing wants of the country have for three years past carried the expenditures something beyond the accruing revenues, the excess having been met until the past year by the surplus which had previously accumulated. That surplus having been exhausted and the anticipated increase in the revenue not having been realized owing to the depression in the commercial business of the country, the finances of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... fiercer, and stronger. They prowled about the pastures together at midnight, strangling the watch-dogs that defended the folds, and killing more sheep than they could devour. He felt, he said, a fierce pleasure in these excursions, and howled in excess of joy as he tore with his fangs the warm flesh of the sheep asunder. This youth was not alone in this horrid confession; many others voluntarily owned that they were weir-wolves, and many more were forced by torture to make the same avowal. Such criminals were ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... are in, up to the close of my life, you may hold it. My 'knowledge' of foreign affairs is, I admit to you, great, and I can answer questions in the Commons, and I can negotiate with foreigners. But these are not the most important points. As to the excess of 'ability' with which you kindly and modestly credit me, I do not admit it for a moment. I should say that you are far more competent to advise and carry through a policy—far more competent to send the right replies to those telegrams ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... on production, distribution, and consumption. Thanks to the system of transportation, we have had cheap labour and a ready market; production, consequently, has exceeded consumption; and the degree of that excess is the measure of our accumulation—that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various

... frenzy, is essential to the ventilation of profound natures. A sea which is deeper than any that Count Massigli[3] measured cannot be searched and torn up from its sleeping depths without a levanter or a monsoon. A nature which is profound in excess, but also introverted and abstracted in excess, so as to be in peril of wasting itself in interminable reverie, cannot be awakened sometimes without afflictions that go to the very foundations, heaving, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... punishing parents they seemed resolved to let Adelle taste the dregs of her folly by herself. Each quarter they deposited with the Paris bankers twelve hundred and fifty dollars and notified them not to honor Mrs. Davis's drafts in excess of this amount. It was automatic. That was the ideal of the trust company, as it is of many private persons, to reduce life ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... offer of brilliant advantages, and she had grown to deem it an ordinance of the higher powers that Adela should marry possessions. She flattered herself that her study of Mutimer's character had been profound; the necessity of making such a study excused, she thought, any little excess of familiarity in which she had indulged, for it had long been clear to her that Mutimer would some day make an offer. He lacked polish, it was true, but really he was more a gentleman than a great many whose right to the name was ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... Fulgentius debate with them in a profitable manner all that day, and now with his whole heart earnestly desiring to behold his monastery again, he sailed swiftly to Africa, touching at Sardinia, and presented himself to his monks, who, in the excess of their joy, could scarcely believe that the blessed Fulgentius ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... are and have the reputation of being a perfect gentleman homo factus ad unguem—as has been said by the learned little Roman, who, between you and me, was not overburthened with an excess of morality. I take the liberty, jinteels, of wishing you a good-night—precor vobia prosperam noctem! Ah, I can do it yet; but it wasn't for nothing that I practised the peripatetics in larned Kerry, where the great O'Finigan ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... matter of comparatively slight importance. An excess of condescension is at the worst a venial and an amiable error; but even at the early period plots were being contrived against the young princess, which, if successful, would have been wholly destructive of her happiness, and which, though she was fully aware of them, she had ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... candle was left unsnufled, but we have lighted it at both ends and put it down to roast. Before the year ends, every sovereign in the banks of this country may be called on to cash 30 pounds of paper—bank-paper, share-paper, foolscap-paper, waste-paper. In 1793, a small excess of paper over specie had the power to cause a panic and break some ninety banks; but our excess of paper is far larger, and with that fatal error we have combined foreign loans and three hundred bubble companies. Here, then, meet three bubbles, each of which, unaided, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... obtained. Should the ports still not be fully uncovered, the throw of the eccentric is too small, and you must either make a new eccentric or reduce the width of the valve. (The second course has the disadvantage of reducing the expansive working of the steam.) Excess movement, on the other hand, implies too great an ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... her feelings overcame her, and, with a little wail, she rushed round the table to Judy, and hung on her arm sobbing. This destroyed the balance of the whole company. Nell got the other arm and swayed to and fro in an excess of misery. Meg's tears rained down into her teacup; Pip dug his heel in the hearthrug, and wondered what was the matter with his eyes; and even Bunty's appetite for ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... confusion Rachel jumped to the conclusion that she had been suddenly stricken by the plague. Accordingly she began to wring her hands in an excess of terror, and exclaimed in ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... different aspects was at once Urania, Juno, and Aphrodite, according as she embodied the idea of the philosopher, the statesman, or the vulgar; lofty and intellectual as Urania, majestic and commanding as Juno, seductive as the goddess of sensuality and excess. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... a too curious excess of it; but if this interpretation of the snuffers is certainly grotesque, if even the theory of the censer seems beaten somewhat thin on the whole, you must admit that it is fascinating and exact so far as it is ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... disreputable pecuniary embarrassments. God knows, so intense was my mental anguish, that during the whole time I was physically incapable even of a 'desire'. My whole body seemed stunned and insensate, from excess of inward suffering—my debts were the 'cause', not the effect; but that I know there can be no substitute for a father, I should say,—surely, surely, the innocence of my whole 'pre' and 'post' academic life, my early distinction, and even the fact, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... told. My boys straggled away wearily, and came back at last, having seemingly missed the dipping-place. They had brought something between a liquid and a solid. Boiled, it was no doubt wholesome enough, but its taste was not such as to tempt to excess. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... Faroese Home Rule Government produce increasing budget surpluses, which in turn help to reduce the large public debt, most of it owed to Denmark. However, the total dependence on fishing makes the Faroese economy extremely vulnerable, and the present fishing efforts appear in excess of what is a sustainable level of fishing in the long term. Oil finds close to the Faroese area give hope for deposits in the immediate Faroese area, which may eventually lay the basis for a more diversified economy and thus lessen dependence ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... that the singers have to take care of details and shadings which is too often the least of their worries. The German societies, where the members sing for pleasure, and not for a salary, are careful to excess, if there can be excess in such matters, and it is their great good fortune to be the interpreters of choruses written in ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... but a look of angelic strength. But they were not remote—they were gloriously human, almost, one would say, divinely human, all gentle movement and warmth and tender breath. They were not remote, save as one's own soul would be remote by its very excess of intimacy with life, Little maids, so shy that their actuality was certain, came before them carrying flowers, and these were followed by youths scattering fragrant burning powder whose fallen flames were instantly pounced upon and extinguished ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... King's Pamphlets, British Museum. The Rump Parliament, in an excess of Puritanic acerbity, had abolished the observance of Christmas, and forbidden the eating of puddings and pies, as ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... characteristic of debauchery. It is the sequence of a life of caprice, where nothing is regulated according to the needs of the body, but everything according to the fantasy of the mind, and one must be always ready to obey the behests of the other. Youth and will can resist excess; but nature silently avenges herself, and the day when she decides to repair her forces, the will struggles to retard her work ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... referring as it does the phenomena both of origin and distribution directly to the Divine will—thus removing the latter with the former out of the domain of inductive science (in which efficient cause is not the first, but the last word)—may be said to be theistic to excess. The contrasted theory is not open to this objection. Studying the facts and phenomena in reference to proximate causes, and endeavoring to trace back the series of cause and effect as far as possible, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... heart, and mind, and soul, and can read your own,—aye, even to its depths. I will not take you unready for your task, in order to cast you into the crucible of my own desires, of my caprice, or my ambition. Let it be all or nothing. You are chilled and galled, sick at heart, overcome by excess of the emotions which but one hour's liberty has produced in you. For me, that is a certain and unmistakable sign that you do not wish to continue at liberty. Would you prefer a more humble life, a life more suited to your strength? Heaven is my witness, that I wish your ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... cannot be the Congo, from its great size and body, and from its steady and continued flow northward through a broad and extensive valley, bounded by enormous mountains westerly and easterly. The altitude of the most northerly point to which the Doctor traced the wonderful river was a little in excess of 2,000 feet; so that, though Baker makes out his lake to be 2,700 feet above the sea, yet the Bahr Ghazal, through which Petherick's branch of the White Nile issues into the Nile, is but 2,000 feet; in which case there is a possibility that the Lualaba ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... discovered a rent in her skirt and it had to be mended. Then, too, Prince proved a little more restive than had been anticipated, from not having been out in two days, and the groom suggested that he take the animal up and down the road on a sharp gallop to give the excess spirit a chance to be worked off. So Grace saw to it that she had at least part of her share of ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope

... was their meaning, were lost upon Maggie. She ran through the court, and up the slope, with the lightness of a lawn; for though she was tired in body to an excess she had never been before in her life, the opening beam of hope in the dark sky made her spirit conquer her ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... The excess of vigor thus being diverted from the fruit canes causes the renewal spurs to form vigorous shoots, which soon grow above the fruit shoots and obtain the light and air they need for their proper development. This method is used successfully ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... hottest in the East Indies, and that the Thames was more so than the hot well at Bristol. The guards died )n their posts at Versailles: and here a captain Halyburton, brother-in-law of lord Moncton, went mad with the excess ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... stimulus of the few wants that sent him hunting or fishing kept up his physical health. Never a lover of rude freedom or outdoor life his sedentary predilections and nice tastes kept him from lapsing into barbarian excess; never a sportsman he followed the chase with no feverish exaltation. Even dumb creatures found out his secret, and at times, stalking moodily over the upland, the brown deer and elk would cross his ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... parts of France, the peasantry here are laborious almost to excess. Robust and hardy, they are distinguished for their perseverance against the obstacles which nature constantly opposes to them. Out-door industry being suspended in winter, during which they are shut up in their cabins for nearly six ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... should persuade you to make it a question of force alone, and try the whole strength of government in opposition to the people. The lessons he has received from experience will probably guard him from such excess of folly, and in your Majesty's virtues we find an unquestionable assurance that no illegal violence will ...
— English Satires • Various

... her wrinkled brown hand, together with another package of Marny's many times in excess of the stage fare of thirty-six miles and which she slipped into her capacious bosom, Aunt Chloe "made her manners" with the slightest dip of a courtesy and left us ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... means. His own words are, that they will clear, or nearly clear, the House, and that no one can lose much. Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! His ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Preston Johnston says, in his life of his father—a valuable book, prepared with great industry, and written with an evident desire to be fair: "In Bragg there was so much that was strong marred by most evident weakness, so many virtues blemished by excess or defect in temper and education, so near an approach to greatness and so manifest a failure to attain it, that his worst enemy ought to find something to admire in him, and his best friend something painful in the attempt to portray him truly." A thorough ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... reminded me of the Salvation Army recruit who was photographed, by desire, 'before and after conversion'; and I demurred a little, until Iris insisted with such captivating pertinacity that—although my personal expenses (always slightly in excess of my income) had been further swelled since my engagement by the innumerable petits soins expected by an absurd custom from every lover—I gave way ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... expenses of the receivership the general receiver is on the first of each month to pay $100,000 to the Fiscal Agent of the loan and the remainder to the Dominican government. Whenever the customs collections exceed $3,000,000 in any year, one-half the excess shall be applied to the sinking fund for the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... (we hear) publishing Sumptuary Lawes to represse the wantonness and excess of Apparel, as you have already testifi'd your abhorrency of Duelling, that infamous and dishonourable gallantry: In fine, you have establish'd so many excellent constitutions, that you seem to leave nothing for us to desire, or your Successor to add either ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... too contracted and carried to excess, have also their derangements of imagination. Persons so affected often believe they see, hear, and feel, what passes only in their brain, and which takes all its reality from their prejudices and self-love. This is less mistrusted, because the object of it is holy and pious; but error and excess, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... some way, fundamentally related to this unprovoked and unreasonable attack. While the South was attributing to the whole North a rabid abolitionism; while the North itself was half suspecting that it had committed some wrong in the excess of its devotion to human rights; the simple fact on the contrary was, that the whole North had been and was still 'psychologized' into a positive respect for slavery, and for slaves as property, which we feel for no other species ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... in half lengthwise. Hollow out the center so that the cucumbers will have the shape of boats. Then melt the butter in a frying pan, add the chopped onion, salt, and pepper, and heat together for a few minutes. Next add the rice, tomatoes, and sufficient bread crumbs to take up any excess of moisture. Fill the cucumbers with this mixture and bake until they are soft enough to be easily pierced with a fork. During the first part of the cooking, pour a small amount of hot water into the pan in which the cucumbers are baked. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... and at a certain stage, structural development should have been retarded and actually reversed, and a development of brain structure alone set in? Nor, be it observed, has any trace of man with a rudimentary brain ever been discovered. Savages have brains far in excess of their requirements, and can consequently be educated and improved. The skull of a prehistoric man found in the Neanderthal near Dusseldorf is of average brain capacity, showing that in those remote ages man was very much in capacity ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:—and by position and experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... his eyes. His forehead showed symptoms of deep thought, and partially redeemed the somewhat mean effect of his other features. The sharp nose, the thin lips, the cold grey eyes, the sallow sunken cheeks, were those of a precise, passionless, self-confident man, little likely to be led into any excess of love or hatred, but little likely also to be shaken in his resolve either for good or evil. His face probably was a true index to his character. Robespierre was not a cruel man; but he had none of that humanity, which makes the shedding ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... are of vastly greater importance than they are for mature or fully developed peoples. The reason is this: the boundary is only the expression of the outward movement or growth, which is nourished from the same stock of race energy as is the inner development. Either carried to an excess weakens or retards the other. If population begins to press upon the limits of subsistence, the acquisition of a new bit of territory obviates the necessity of applying more work and more intelligence to the old area, to make it yield subsistence ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... little care in placing it near a cistern, and having a leathern pipe for it, a bath may be easily filled once or twice a week with warm water; and it is a vulgar error that the warm bath relaxes. An excess, either warm or cold, will relax, and so will any other excess; but the sole effect of the warm bath moderately taken is, that it throws off the bad humours of the body by opening and clearing the pores. As to summer bathing, a father may soon teach his children to swim, and thus perhaps may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... the peculiar character of railroad works as distinguished from other roads; for, in railways, he early contended that large sums would be wisely expended in perforating barriers of hills with long tunnels, and in raising the lower levels with the excess cut down from the adjacent high ground. In proportion as these views forced themselves upon his mind and were corroborated by his daily experience, he became more and more convinced of the hopelessness of applying steam locomotion to common roads; for every ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... department to men of very scanty qualifications. Few men have faith enough to prepare for work that is not yet in sight. Then with the sudden breaking out of musical history and appreciation courses all over the country, the demand appeared instantly far in excess of the supply. The few men who had prepared themselves for scholarly critical work were, as a rule, in the employ of daily newspapers, and the colleges were compelled to delegate the historical and interpretative lectures to those ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... time he had dropped the "Miss," but he dropped it purposely now. Miss Ricks noticed the omission, which probably imbued her with the courage to voice again her excess of sympathy. Said she: "Oh, I'm so ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... that he was in the full possession of his sex-powers until he was 15 years 3 months old (when he had his first emission). His sex life has been normal. He masturbated somewhat when he slept with other boys (or men) during early manhood, but not to excess. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... there, but as the survey continued he became less conversational, and walked about in silent inspection of everything, floors, walls, windows, and ceilings, putting on a pair of eye-glasses and assuming a hypercritical expression in excess even of his ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... restored and his anger removed. They paid no attention to concubinage, rape, and incest, unless the crime were committed by a timava on a woman of rank. On the contrary, the committal of such sins openly was very common, for all of them were very much inclined to this excess; but I cannot find that they were addicted to the sin against nature in the olden time. Verbal insults, especially to chiefs, women, and old men, were regarded as deserving the severest kind of punishment, and it was difficult to obtain the pardon ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... evolved, and the sober gatherings for matters of Church and State for a time took their place. The hatred of "wanton Bacchanallian Christmasses" spent throughout England, as Cotton said, in "revelling, dicing, carding, masking, mumming, consumed in compotations, in interludes, in excess of wine, in mad mirth," was the natural reaction of intelligent and thoughtful minds against the excesses of a festival which had ceased to be a Christian holiday, but was dominated by a lord of misrule who did not hesitate to invade the churches in time of service, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... see nothing but an empty plain—I was glad to find my single fellow-passenger a man inclined to talk. I did not like his mustache, which was too large for his face, nor his too careful civility and arrangement of words; but he was genial to excess, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Frederick, the "Wonder of the World" to the thirteenth century, and ever alluring, yet ever eluding, the curiosity of the nineteenth; or a Henry VII, ineffectual and melancholic. Such "justice" passes easily by its own excess into the injustice which dispatches Alva's army or finds bizarre expression in the phrase of "le Roi soleil,"—"The State? I am the State." The ideal of modern life, the ideal of which Britain is the supreme representative amongst existing empires, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... sir," replied Somers, giving the military salute; which excess of politeness, however, was lost on ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... In costliness and riotous excess the Prince of Purpoole's revel at Gray's Inn was not inferior to any similar festivity in the time of Elizabeth. On the 20th of December, St. Thomas's Eve, the Prince (one Master Henry Holmes, a Norfolk gentleman) took up his quarters in the Great Hall of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... Sophie a choice, even had he been as old and ugly as he was young and handsome. I do not quite know—so many events have come to pass since then, and blurred the clearness of my recollections—if I loved him or not. He was very much devoted to me; he almost frightened me by the excess of his demonstrations of love. And he was very charming to everybody around me, who all spoke of him as the most fascinating of men, and of me as the most fortunate of girls. And yet I never felt quite at my ease with him. I was always relieved when his visits were ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... song, Through many a valley and meadow green Making her flowery foot-prints seen,— Deepening ever and broadening out, Greeting the hills with a joyous shout,— Greeting the rocks with a soft caress, And singing still in her joy's excess, Till her song swelled out to an anthem free, As she caught the flash of the distant Sea— The glorious Sea that, with answering tone, Welcomed his guest ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... also, that this excess of generosity, which cast private property into the public stock, was so far from being required by the apostles, or imposed as a law of Christianity, that Peter reminds Ananias that he had been guilty, in his ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... and Elsberg's method consists in avoiding what most of the others require, viz.: the expensive transportation and handling of fresh peat, which contains 80 to 90 per cent. of water, and the rapid removal of this excess of water before the manufacture. In the other methods the surplus water must be slowly removed ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... any mitigation of her hardships. The occupations which might be engaged in at home were closed to her by mere overwhelming competition. The number of women who are prepared to make ten million shirts for a penny are already far in excess of the demand, and so, except by a severe under-cutting such as a contract to make twenty million shirts for a halfpenny, work of this description is ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... abandon his uncomfortable quarters at the mill and take up his residence in the cottage, which stood just beyond the lawn of the big house. This cottage had been furnished de pied en cap many years before, in readiness against an excess of visitors, which in days gone by was not of infrequent occurrence at Place-du-Bois. It was Melicent's delighted intention to keep house here. And she foresaw no obstacle in the way of procuring the needed domestic aid in a place which ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... contents of tank, N, must be thoroughly mixed by means of the air pump. The quantity of lime to be used for each tankful of water must depend upon the hardness of the water, 3/4 oz. being required for each tankful for each degree of hardness. It is desirable, however, always to have an excess of lime in the tank, N, so as to insure obtaining a saturated solution of lime. When first mixed the contents of the tank, N, will have a creamy appearance, but when the superabundant lime has subsided the supernatant liquid will be a perfectly clear saturated solution of lime. Therefore, in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... the average individual is too apt to recognize two constitutions—one, the constitution of the State, and the second, an unwritten constitution, to him of higher authority, under which he believes that no law is obligatory which he regards as in excess of the true powers of government. Of this latter spirit, the widespread violation of the prohibition ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... as queen and dispossess her brother, this perverted monarch continued his profligate career in most open fashion. He had not only one mistress but many of them at the court, he loaded them with riches and with favors, and often, in a somewhat questionable excess of religious zeal, he appointed them to posts of honor and importance in conventual establishments! No sooner had Isabella's wedding been celebrated than Henry began to stir up trouble again, declared that the queen's ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... and discipline of the Church. It strove to elevate the morals and the learning of the clergy, to check their worldliness and covetousness, and to restrain them from abusing the authority of the Church through excess of zeal or more corrupt motives. It invited bishops to set up free schools to teach poor scholars grammar and theology. It forbade trial by battle and trial by ordeal. It subjected the existing monastic orders to stricter superintendence, and forbade ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... find, If to mighty Foutsa lifted He but keep his heart and mind. He who goods and cattle lacking Is to fell disease a prey, In whose household bones are cracking, Cuts occurring every day, Who though slumbering never resteth From excess of bitter pain, And what he in prayer requesteth Never, never can obtain,— To earth-favouring Foutsa's figure If but reverence he shall pay Dire misfortune's dreadful rigour Flits for ever and for aye; In his sleep no ills distress him, ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... to employ under any given circumstances it is, of course, impossible to lay down beforehand; but the essence of the matter is that the limit of force to be thus employed is far in excess of what any existing tactical unit ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... do not hope it! excess of misery— desire of vengeance have restored my reason: I feel but too well, both for myself and you, that my senses are right again, and tremble thou to hear they are so! I see you now in your true colours, in all the horrors of your atrocious guilt! your hour is arrived; your cup is full; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... supposing that the paramour, whoever he might be, was with the lady. Somerset, in the excess of his precaution, had returned to London by land, leaving Lady Neville to return by herself in the boat with the other passengers; for the boat was a sort of packet which plied regularly between ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... most pleasing arrangement of pattern irregularity was obtained by employing women of refinement and natural taste to punch out the patterns with small dies. So many square feet of plates was exacted from Elizabeth as a minimum, and for whatever square feet she did in excess she received a small payment. The room, like most rooms of women workers, was under a manageress: men had been found by the Labour Company not only less exacting but extremely liable to excuse favoured ladies from a proper share of their duties. The manageress was ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... to feel it so was not come,' said Leonard; 'now since I have grasped this hope of making known to others the way to that Grace that held me up,'—he paused with excess of feeling—'all has been joy, even in the recollection of the darkest days. Mr. Wilmot's words come back now, that it may all have been training for my Master's work. Even the manual labour may have been my preparation!' His eyes brightened, and he was indeed more like the eager, hopeful youth ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ostensibly about her impressions and her intentions. She tried to put Densher again on his American doings, but he wouldn't have that to-day. As he thought of the way in which, the other afternoon, before Kate, he had sat complacently "jawing," he accused himself of excess, of having overdone it, having made—at least apparently—more of a "set" at their entertainer than he was at all events then intending. He turned the tables, drawing her out about London, about her vision of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... dull, or impious; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so in any wise. Our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight, like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The colouring of Scott and Byron is full and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. Our practical failures in colouring are merely the necessary consequences of our prolonged want of practice during the periods of Renaissance affectation and ignorance; and the only durable difference between old and modern colouring, is the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... very long, and as I look back upon that short period I feel like refunding the comfortable salary received as superintendent of an hospital; for I know I was only sixty-five per cent efficient, for efficiency decreases in direct proportion as excess weight ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters

... intersection are fortunate points—others are obviously the reverse; and generally the fortunate points lie near the middle of each arc, or the mean; while the less fortunate ones lie towards the ends, that is, towards excess upon one side or another. I have already said that, in the amount of attention they pay to locality just now, the novelists seem to be running into excess. If I must choose between one excess and the other—between the carpet-bagger and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the Governor—a person whom you ought to know. His property will not be damaged in his absence, for they fear the law. The heat of war is one thing, and cold-blooded malice is another. It is the sight and sound of him that irritates them and so drives them to excess.' ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... liquor-drinking men." But who filled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then disappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no time in the period that it covers when the supply of workers—abstemious male workers—was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been so is sufficiently attested by ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... the same genus applied to the stigma of some one species, yields a perfect gradation in the number of seeds produced, up to nearly complete or even quite complete fertility; and, as we have seen, in certain abnormal cases, even to an excess of fertility, beyond that which the plant's own pollen will produce. So in hybrids themselves, there are some which never have produced, and probably never would produce, even {256} with the pollen of either pure parent, a ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... rougher sex. When the young warrior made his appearance, it softened the cares of his mother, who well knew that, when he grew up, every deficiency in tenderness to his wife would be made up in superabundant duty and affection to her. If it were possible to carry filial veneration to excess, it was done here; for all other charities were absorbed in it. I wonder this system of depressing the sex in their early years, to exalt them, when all their juvenile attractions are flown, and when mind alone can distinguish ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Mercy had the gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with justice and rectitude. Masamune expressed it well in his oft-quoted aphorism—"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; Benevolence indulged beyond ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... permitted their slaves to read and write and worship the gods of paganism in peace and security, for there was nothing in the laws, literature, or religion of the age to awaken in the soul of the bondman a just sense of his rights as a man. But the American slaveholder cannot be thus lenient. In the excess of his benevolence, as a political propagandist, he has kindled a fire for the oppressed of the old world to gaze at with hope, and for crowned heads and dynasties to tremble at; but a due regard to the safety of his "peculiar institution," compels him to put out ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... virtues. They love their country, and are ready to die for her. They are courteous, and even chivalrous, they are hospitable to an excess, they are good husbands and kindly masters, they are recklessly brave; and, if they are unduly fond of finery, I, who supply so many of them, should be the last to find fault with them on that score. They are proud, and look down upon us traders, but that does not hurt us; and, if ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... little property—but not much—at stake in the soundness of our institutions. This class have, however, of late begun to shew a visible interest in the subject—an interest which, had it existed earlier, might have prevented any of the anomalies of which we complain from increasing to their present excess. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... Gervaise turned on his heel, and began to pace the poop, for he was slightly vexed, though not angered. Such little dialogues often occurred between him and his captain, the latter knowing that his commander's greatest professional failing was excess of daring, while he felt that his own reputation was too well established to be afraid to inculcate prudence. Next to the honour of the flag, and his own perhaps, Greenly felt the greatest interest in that of Sir Gervaise Oakes, under whom he had served as midshipman, lieutenant, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... extended the risk of contraband wares in excess of international agreements, and now raises a cry when the same weapons are ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... the growing child another, the man or woman whose labor is purely intellectual another; and to understand how best to meet these needs, demands a knowledge to which most of us have been indifferent. If there is excess or lack of any necessary element, that excess or lack means disease, and for such disease we are wholly responsible. Food is not the only and the universal elixir of life; for weak or poor blood is often an inheritance, and comes ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... made in the outset, and thoroughly drenched with water when the plants are first put in, it will after that need only to be watered about once a month, and to be ventilated by occasionally leaving open the door for a half-hour or hour when the moisture obscures the glass and seems in excess. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Saint-Saens found in the symphonic poem his one special form, so that it seemed Liszt had created it less for himself than for his French successor. A fine reserve of poetic temper saved him from hysterical excess. He never lost the music in the story, disdaining the mere rude graphic stroke; in his dramatic symbols a musical charm is ever commingled. And a like poise helped him to a right plot and point in his descriptions. So his symphonic poems ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... of money is not settled in an exceptional way, there is nevertheless a peculiarity about it, as there is about many articles. It is a commodity subject to great fluctuations of value, and those fluctuations are easily produced by a slight excess or a slight deficiency of quantity. Up to a certain point money is a necessity. If a merchant has acceptances to meet to-morrow, money he must and will find today at some price or other. And it is this urgent need of the ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... with which the peripheral sexual impulse manifests itself. There is, in fact, a marked distinction between cases, according as we have to do with an occasional general sensation in the genital organs, or with masturbation to excess and with sexual assaults upon others. But we must not describe as sexual paradoxy all manifestations of the sexual life occurring in early childhood. A reference to the last chapter will show that the cases of sexual paradoxy, when accurately studied, differ from the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... of sound reason use their pipes For colics, pains, and windy gripes; And smoking's useful, we will own, To give the nerves and fluids tone; But poor old Slug has to confess He uses it to great excess, And will indulge his appetite Beyond his reason and his light. If others round him do abstain, It keeps him all the time in pain; And if a sentence should be spoke Against his much-beloved smoke, Tho' it be in the way of joke, He thinks his union's almost ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... purposes of social training a household of twenty surpasses a household of five as an Oxford College surpasses an eight-roomed house in a cheap street. Ten children, with the necessary adults, make a community in which an excess of sentimentality is impossible. Two children make a doll's house, in which both parents and children become morbid if they keep to themselves. What is more, when large families were the fashion, they were organized as tyrannies much more than as "atmospheres of love." Francis Place tells us that ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... of outward. The sun rises and sets to minister to their particular happiness. If they should die, the stars would vanish. We understand; a few months ago we, too, were like that. What makes us reckless of death is our intense gratitude that we have altered. We want to prove to ourselves in excess how utterly we are changed from what we were. In his secret heart the egotist is a self-despiser. Can you imagine what a difference it works in a man after years of self-contempt, at least for one brief moment to approve ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... when taking their shady literary walks among the Columns of Interesting Matter, have been known to remark—with a glibness and grace, by Jove, greatly in excess of their salaries—that the reason why we don't produce great works of imagination in this country, as they do in other countries, is because we haven't the genius, you know. They think—do they?—that the bran-new localities, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various

... thought of losing her; but Clairon infirm was Clairon forgotten, and to a decaying actor or actress a French audience is the most merciless in the world. The brightest and best of them, as with us, died in the service of the public. Monfleury, Mondory, and Bricourt died of apoplexy, brought on by excess of zeal. Moliere, who fell in harness, was buried with less ceremony than some favourite dog. The charming Lecouvreur, that Oldfield of the French stage, whose beauty and intellect were the double charm which rendered theatrical ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... grateful. For the youth of this nation soon learned that in these newly opened paths, their invention and sentiment, so long straitened and confined within the severe limits of the old system, could move with the utmost freedom, and at the same time be preserved from licentious excess by the delicate spirit of the new lines. Thus natural fervor, grace, and fecundity of thought found here a most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... Gilfoyle's folks right without giving you a look-in. But being dead-broke, I thought maybe you'd like to see things done in a decent manner. It's going to be hard enough for that old couple up-State to get Tommie back, as they've got to, without taking any excess heartbreak up in the baggage-car. Do ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... waste and wander? Why dost thou pass thy years unwed, following arms, thirsting for throats? Nor does my beauty draw thy vows. Carried away by excess of frenzy, thou art little prone to love. Steeped in blood and slaughter, thou judgest wars better than the bed, nor refreshest thy soul with incitements. Thy fierceness finds no leisure; dalliance is far from thee, and savagery fostered. Nor is thy hand free from blasphemy while thou loathest ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... with some persons, temperance—that is, moderation—is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent's authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... and strip bodies naked to show the stripes they have received. These acts are commonly of mighty efficacy, as fully revealing the reality of the occurrence. Thus it was that Caesar's robe, bloody all over, exposed in the Forum, drove the people of Rome into an excess of madness. It was well known that he was assassinated; his body also lay in state, until his funeral should take place; yet that garment, still dripping with blood, formed so graphic a picture of the horrible murder that ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament; They are but beggars that can count their worth; But my true love is grown to such excess, I cannot sum up half ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... rage with my anguish! Satiate your hard heart, while I follow to the grave my seven sons. Yet where is your triumph? Bereaved as I am, I am still richer than you, my conqueror. Scarce had she spoken when the bow sounded and struck terror into all hearts except Niobe's alone. She was brave from excess of grief. The sisters stood in garments of mourning over the biers of their dead brothers. One fell, struck by an arrow, and died on the corpse she was bewailing. Another, attempting to console her mother, suddenly ceased to speak, and sank lifeless to the earth. A third tried to escape ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... all to yourself. "You may like her more or less now," I was assured at the height of the season; "but you must wait till the month of May, when she'll give you all she has, to love her. Then the foreigners, or the excess of them, are gone; the galleries and ruins are empty, and the place," said my informant, who was a happy Frenchman of the Academie de France, "renait a ellememe." Indeed I was haunted all winter by an irresistible prevision of what Rome must be in declared ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... could rarely go into a hospital, were deprived of animal experiment, and compelled to draw conclusions from the stories of people who had been ill, the reports of nurses, each of whom had her own system of diagnosis, and the statistics compiled by the Bureau of Internal Revenue on the excess profits of druggists. The social scientist has usually to make what he can out of categories that were uncritically in the mind of an official who administered some part of a law, or who was out ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... case, through excess of zeal, I am afraid you have gone much too far. Mr Lance Distin is a gentleman, a student, and of very excellent family. A young man of excellent attainments, and about as likely to commit such a brutal assault as you ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... unifying principle was the imperial principle. People talk of the Thirty Years' War as having disintegrated Germany. I should say it was the thousand years' war, of which the Thirty Years' War was only the worst excess, the worst paroxysm of that plague of religious dissension with which the Germans are inoculated. And without unity, Germany is a very queer structure. Its owners, or its inhabitants, don't possess ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... sheep might be fed on a pasture, and yet there might be more grass on the pasture, when the sheep left it, than there was at first. We may generalise this and other such facts into a perfectly definite conception of the increase of food in excess of consumption; which thus becomes a possibility, the limitations of which are to be discovered only by experience. Therefore, if it is asserted that cooked food has been made to grow in excess of rapid consumption, that statement cannot logically be rejected ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... a large ozone generator. By this apparatus ozone is produced in any required quantity, and is made to play many useful purposes. It is passed through the drinking water in the reserve reservoir whenever the water shows excess of organic impurity, and it is conveyed into the city for diffusion into private houses, for purposes ...
— Hygeia, a City of Health • Benjamin Ward Richardson

... heights of love,—such love as we have not even dreamed of yet,—will we then look back upon the tears, the pain, the heartache of to-day? Will we stop to recount the sorrows through which we climbed to the shining heights? No, they will be forgotten in the excess of joy!" ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... power of spring; It made him whistle, it made him sing: His heart was mirthful to excess, But the Rover's mirth ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... three thousand that we lacked in the North. Our bids had passed through his hands last; he knew our northern range was not fully stocked, and had forwarded the estimates to our silent partner at Washington, and now the firm had been assigned awards in excess of their holdings. But he was the kind of a partner I liked, and if he could see his way clear, he could depend on my backing him to the extent of ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... record and mark how often he has reversed himself to detect a certain mental and temperamental instability clearly indicating a lack of fixed or resolute intellectual purpose. This is characteristic of an excess in education; of the half baked mind overtrained. The overeducated mind fancies himself a doctrinaire when he is in point of fact ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... a great eater. "As the French philosopher used to prove his existence by cogito, ergo sum," Congreve wrote to Pope long after, "the greatest proof of Gay's existence is edit, ergo est."[5] He ate in excess always, and not infrequently drank too much, and for exercise had no liking, though he was not averse from a ramble around London streets. As the years passed, he became fat, but found comfort in the fact ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... that period fill us with dismay; but perhaps after all there was less harm done than appears, and not more of the fearful tribute of young life which our fated race is always paying than is still exacted amid a population much less generally addicted to excess. But that of course increased rather than diminished the jovial aspect of Edinburgh life when Walter Scott was young, and when the few cares he had in hand, the occasional bit of work, interfered very little with the warm and lively social life in the midst of which he had been ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... time. The cultivation in the Sindh depends on the river floods and inundation canals, helped by wells. In the Pachadh dams are built to divert the water of the torrents into embanked fields. The cultivated area is recorded as 1723 square miles, but this is enormously in excess of the cropped areas, for a very large part of the embanked area is often unsown. The encroachments of the Indus have enforced the transfer of the district headquarters from Dera Ghazi Khan to a ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... presume to intrude, Unless he is sent for to vary our bliss. With mirth, wit, and dancing, and singing conclude, To regale every sense, with delight in excess. ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... teach us, that at a covenant-feast, or when covenanters feast, they should have more grace, than meat at their tables: or if (through the blessing of God) their meat be much, their temperance should be more. The covenant yields us much business, and calls to action: excess soils our gifts, and damps our spirits, fitting us for sleep, not for work. In and by this covenant, we (who were almost carried into spiritual and corporal slavery) are called to strive for the mastery. Let us therefore (as this word and the apostle's rule instruct us) "Be temperate ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... pensions. To whom were they distributed? Uniformly, exclusively, to the friends of lord Shelburne. Lord Shelburne proposed them to his august colleague, and the marquis, whose faults, if he had any, were an excess of mildness, and an unsuspecting simplicity, perhaps too readily complied. But let it be remembered, that not one of his friends accepted, or to not one of his friends were these emoluments extended. But, if the noble marquis were sparing in the distribution of pensions, the deficiency ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin



Words linked to "Excess" :   redundant, surplusage, superfluity, plethora, superfluous, outrageousness, overindulgence, overabundance, embarrassment, humoring, nimiety, extravagancy, excessiveness, extra, unnecessary, indulgence, immoderation, surfeit, surplus



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