To say you are welcome were superfluous. [ William Shakespeare ]
There are, while human miseries abound,
A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
Without one fool or flatterer at your board,
Without one hour of sickness or disgust. [ Armstrong ]
Superfluous advice is not retained by the full mind. [ Horace ]
Full oft we see cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. [ Shakespeare ]
A pure style in writing results from the rejection of everything superfluous. [ Mme. Necker ]
To place wit before good sense is to place the superfluous before the necessary. [ M. de Montlosier ]
We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking. [ Joubert ]
A state is never greater than when all its superfluous hands are employed in the service of the public. [ Hume ]
Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, most earnest humor. [ E. P. Whipple ]
Frugality is good if liberality be joined with it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses; the last is bestowing them to the benefit of others that need. The first without the last begets covetousness; the last without the first begets prodigality. [ William Penn ]
Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged. [ Colton ]
Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain. [ Johnson ]
Nature, at all events, humanly speaking, is manifestly very fond of color; for she has made nothing without it. Her skies are blue; her fields, green; her waters vary with her skies; her animals, vegetables, minerals, are all colored. She paints a great many of them in apparently superfluous hues, as if to show the dullest eye how she loves color. [ Leigh Hunt ]
A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero, - the wise, the good, or the great man, - very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light. [ Joseph Addison ]