Extremes

Extremes are measures falling far outside the norm, and may include drastic or foolhardy expedients undertaken in a crisis.

Quotes

• Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. What are the two? There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata? ... It is the Noble Eightfold Path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.
  • Gautama Buddha, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

• "Everything exists": That is one extreme. "Everything doesn't exist": That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, The Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle
  • Thanissaro (1997), Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya's Kaccayanagotta Sutta, SN 12.15

• Should there be danger of such an event — should he be the cause of adding a single more trouble to her existence — Why, I think, I shall be justified in going to extremes!
  • Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847); Heathcliff (Chapter XIV)

• For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.
  • Hippocrates, in Aphorisms as translated by Francis Adams (1849) 1:6
  • Variant translations:
  • Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.

• To "go to extremes" is ever symptomatic of genius and greatness.
  • Ragnar Redbeard (pseudonym), Might is Right (1890)

• Darling I don't know why I go to extremes
  Too high or too low there ain't no in-betweens.
  • Billy Joel, "I Go To Extremes", Storm Front (1989)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 246

• The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook.
  • Thomas Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming

• Avoid extremes.
  • Attributed to Cleobulus of Lindos

• Thus each extreme to equal danger tends,
  Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.
  • Abraham Cowley, Davideis, Book III, line 205

• Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims (1876), Greatness

• Extremes are faulty and proceed from men: compensation is just, and proceeds from God.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter XVII

• Extremes meet.
  • Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableaux de Paris, Volume IV. Title of Chapter 348

• And feel by turns the bitter change
  Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), II. 599

• He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.
  • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter XXVI

• Avoid Extremes; and shun the fault of such
  Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 385

• Extremes in nature equal good produce;
  Extremes in man concur to general use.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle III, line 161

• Extrema primo nemo tentavit loco.
  • No one tries extreme remedies at first.
  • Seneca the Younger, Agamemnon, 153

• Like to the time o' the year between the extremes
  Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.
  • William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act I, scene 5, line 51

• Not fearing death, nor shrinking for distress,
  But always resolute in most extremes.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I (c. 1588-90), Act IV, scene 1, line 37

• Who can be patient in such extremes?
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 1, line 215

• And where two raging fires meet together,
  They do consume the thing that feeds their fury:
  Though little fire grows great with little wind,
  Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Act II, scene 1, line 133

• O brother, speak with possibilities,
  And do not break into these deep extremes.
  • William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (c. 1584-1590), Act III, scene 1

See also

• Extremism
• Moderation