“People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Edith Schaeffer2

American writer 1914–2013

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“The desire to be perfect. Women innately have this weird thing where they try to have a perfect persona—to look perfect, be perfect, act perfect, have their kids look a certain way. Women put so much pressure on themselves.”

Mila Kunis (1983) American actress

"Mila Kunis on Life With Ashton and Making Babies: “There’s Nothing We Don’t Know About Each Other"" in Glamour https://www.glamour.com/story/mila-kunis-on-life-with-ashton-and-making-babies (6 July 2016)

“Perfect is the virtue which is according to the Mean! Rare have they long been among the people, who could practice it!”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

“Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don't throw them away. Whatever you loose, you'll find again, but what you throw away you never get back.
-Oibore (Enishi's dad) to Yahiko and Misao”

Nobuhiro Watsuki (1970) Japanese manga artist

“Ideal perfection is not the true basis of English legislation. We look at the attainable; we look at the practicable; and we have too much of English sense to be drawn away by those sanguine delineations of what might possibly be attained in Utopia, from a path which promises to enable us to effect great good for the people of England.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

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“What has been attained may be lost again. Only when you realize the true peace, the peace you have never lost, that peace will remain with you, for it was never away. Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what it is that you have never lost? That which is there before the beginning and after the ending of everything; that to which there is no birth, nor death. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Peace
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“When people abuse you, you must walk away. When you have to work with people throwing dirt at you on a daily basis, you walk away.”

Patricia de Lille (1951) Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure

Source: On 31 October 2018, when she announced her resignation as mayor of Cape Town in front of the Western Cape High Court, Cape Town. As quoted by Noloyiso Mtembu in Patricia De Lille goes out guns blazing https://www.iol.co.za/weekend-argus/news/patricia-de-lille-goes-out-guns-blazing-17718926, Independent Online, (31 October 2018)

“Everywhere you look it unpacks to infinity. What you look for, you find. And you people can have it. All of it.”

M. John Harrison book Light

The comfortable generosity of this offer puzzled Kearney, so he decided to ignore it. It seemed meaningless anyway.
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“We are living a moment of truth in Iraq, a moment in which we have to look fair and square at disagreeable realities, in which we have to look at ourselves. The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison are a kind of mirror in which we have to look at ourselves and ask: what kind of people did this? How did this become possible? Could I have done a thing like this to those people?”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

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“Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond? You never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud, and what changes a darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things—what eternity is, for example—I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

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“We have come to this town where lives the cream of American art.… But just now I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked "Why not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching pads there?" I do not know. Just listen to what reason I was told: "We," which means the American authorities, "cannot guarantee your security if you go there." What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken over the place that can destroy me? Then what must I do? Commit suicide? … For me, this situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people.”

Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Remarks during a Hollywood luncheon (19 September 1959), quoted in New York Times (20 September 1959) "Text of Khrushchev Debate With Skouras"

“People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it”

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Edith Schaeffer2

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