Definition of Superfluous

Superfluous

More than is wanted or is sufficient; rendered unnecessary by superabundance; unnecessary; useless; excessive; as, a superfluous price.

Related Definitions:

As, By, Excessive, Is, More, Or, Price, Rendered, Sufficient, Superabundance, Superfluous, Than, Useless, Wanted

Superfluous Quotations

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.
Voltaire

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.
Leonardo da Vinci

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

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

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

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
Will Durant

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Be convinced that, if man were able to reach the end without preparatory studies, such studies would not be preparatory but tiresome and utterly superfluous.
Maimonides

Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.
Jacques Ellul

However, if the religions in essence merely repeat statements from the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, such a Declaration becomes superfluous; an ethic is more than rights.
Hans Kung

Also a great part of Polish industry proved to have existed only to support the Soviet military industry, and it became superfluous and incapable of being transformed into anything else. We did not foresee that or the magnitude of these phenomena.
Andrzej Wajda

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.
Elias Canetti

Some pacifists have carried the sound idea of the prime importance of security too far, to the point of declaring that any consideration of disarmament is superfluous and pointless as long as eternal peace has not been attained.
Ludwig Quidde

Let us assume that the ideal were reached; let us imagine a state of international life in which the danger of war no longer exists. Then no one would dare to demand a penny for obviously completely superfluous armaments.
Ludwig Quidde

One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it.
David Hilbert

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.
Abbe Pierre

The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace. Everything it does which helps prevent World War III is good. Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
J. G. Ballard

The problem is the following, black music is increasing encumbered by white elements, often pleasant but always superfluous, easily and advantageously replaced with black elements.
Boris Vian

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.
Johannes Brahms

Laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. Laughter is the antidote.
George Gurdjieff

More Superfluous Quotations

Superfluous Translations

superfluous in Afrikaans is oortollig
superfluous in Dutch is overtollig, overbodig
superfluous in Latin is supervacuus, susicivus
superfluous in Spanish is superfluo

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