Perfection Quotes

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

Harriet Braike

In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to understand others. We must try, live, create, feel, grow and love.

Bryant McGill, Stanford Lectures on Poetry, 1990

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

H. Jackson Brown Jr., O Magazine, December 2003

Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others for thou has many faults and imperfections of thine own that require forbearance. If thou are not able to make thyself that which thou wishest, how canst thou expect to mold another in conformity to thy will?

Thomas a Kempis

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consists in nothing more than the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul.

Pythagorus

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine arts; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest to reach true perfection.

E. C. Stedman

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Clu

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make yourself a happier and more productive person.

Dr. David M. Burns

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.

Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.

W. Somerset Maugham

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Aristotle

It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

Thomas Huxley

A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.

Chinese Prove

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of others.

Francois Fenelon

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering you own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - Every day begin the task anew.

Saint Francis de Sales

The history of the Victorian Age will never be written we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - Ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

Lytton Strachey

The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.

Hazlitt

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

Samuel McChord Crothers