Daily Inspiration Quote by Armistead Maupin

A line like "Too much of a good thing is wonderful" works because it smuggles rebellion into the shape of a platitude. We’re trained to hear the warning embedded in the familiar phrase "too much of a good thing" - the Protestant-American reflex that pleasure must be rationed, that excess is how you lose your moral credit score. Maupin flips the last word into a grin. It’s not just inversion for cleverness; it’s a declaration that the customary anxiety around delight is the real vice.

The intent reads as permission. Maupin, a novelist whose work is inseparable from queer life, chosen family, and the long aftermath of shame, is teasing a culture that treats joy as suspicious and appetite as evidence against you. The subtext is almost defiant: the problem isn’t that goodness becomes dangerous when it’s abundant; the problem is a society that insists you should feel guilty for wanting more.

Context matters. Coming out of the late-20th-century American landscape - where sexuality, pleasure, and self-invention were simultaneously commercialized and policed - the line lands like a tiny manifesto. It’s campy, yes, but the camp is doing political work. Excess becomes a survival strategy: take the sweetness while you can, refuse the script that says "enough" is the only respectable amount.

Even the word "wonderful" is pointed. Not "fine", not "acceptable" - a full-throated, sensory endorsement. Maupin isn’t arguing against moderation in the abstract; he’s mocking the reflex to distrust happiness, especially the kind that arrives in multiples.