But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

The essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men.

Through your life, most people peel away the junk that's not useful, that's superfluous. You are determined to peel that away. I do one thing at a time. One man at a time. One car. One house. One child. One job.

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked.

Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.

God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.

No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want - or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you're better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

The question I asked Georges has now become a general one - You who thought you were superfluous who thought there was no place for you in society not only are you not superfluous you are needed and so those who were beggars become givers.

But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

What nature requires is obtainable and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat - superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare that force us to grow old in camp that dash us upon foreign shores.

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

The superfluous a very necessary thing.