How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.—Shakespeare.
Every great example takes hold of us with the authority of a miracle, and says to us: "If ye had but faith, ye could also be able to do the things which I do."—Jacobi.
Excellence.—Nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is good with ease and rapidity.—Aikin.
Excelsior.—Man's life is in the impulse of elevation to something higher.—Jacobi.
Excess.—Too much noise deafens us; too much light blinds us; too great a distance or too much of proximity equally prevents us from being able to see; too long and too short a discourse obscures our knowledge of a subject; too much of truth stuns us.—Pascal.
O fleeting joys of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes.—Milton.
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.—Plato.
Excitement.—There is always something interesting and beautiful about a universal popular excitement of a generous character, let the object of it be what it may. The great desiring heart of man, surging with one strong, sympathetic swell, even though it be to break on the beach of life and fall backwards, leaving the sands as barren as before, has yet a meaning and a power in its restlessness with which I must deeply sympathize.—Mrs. Stowe.
Violent excitement exhausts the mind, and leaves it withered and sterile.—Fénelon.
The language of excitement is at best but picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.—Thoreau.