Quotes about perfection
page 16

“When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"Perfect Knowledge in Final Things" (p. 110)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Knowledge

“Donald Conroy is the only person I have ever known whose self-esteem was absolutely unassailable. There was not one thing about himself that my father did not like, nor was there one thing about himself that he would change. He simply adored the man he was and walked with perfect confidence through every encounter in his life. Dad wished everyone could be just like him. His stubbornness was an art form. The Great Santini did what he did, when he wanted to do it, and woe to the man who got in his way. Once I introduced my father before he gave a speech to an Atlanta audience. I said at the end of the introduction, "My father decided to go into the Marine Corps on the day he discovered his IQ was the temperature of this room."”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

My father rose to the podium, stared down at the audience, and said without skipping a beat, "My God, it's hot in here! It must be at least 180 degrees".
Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

Life, God, Art, Way

“Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity and literary vagueness… It may well be that the slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology will be the most fruitful building ground during the years to come and that mathematical economics will remain too flawless in its perfection to be very fruitful.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1948) "Samuelson's Foundations: The Role of Mathematics in Economics," In: Journal of Political Economy, Vol 56 (June). as cited in: Peter J. Boettke (1998) " James M. Buchanan and the Rebirth of Political Economy http://publicchoice.info/Buchanan/files/boettke.htm". Boettke further explains "Boulding's words are even more telling today than they were then as we have seen the fruits of the formalist revolution in economic theory and how it has cut economics off from the social theoretic discourse on the human condition." 1940s

Mathematics, Knowledge

“Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", page 312 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=330&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

World, Soul, Distant, Appearance

“"Perfect Sense (part I)" on Amused to Death (Roger Waters, 1992)”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Variant: "Perfect Sense" on Amused to Death (Roger Waters, 1992)

Death, Sense, Water, Parting

“You were a precious pearl
How I loved to see you shine,
You were the perfect girl.
And you were mine.
For a time.
For a time.
Just for a time.”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

"Just for a Time"
And Still I Rise (1978)

Love, Girl, Time

“Perfection is graciously dealing with imperfection.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

4 November 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/29641324869 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected.”

M. H. Abrams (1912–2015) American literary theorist

People's Education interview (2007)

Thinking

“It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Thomas Babington Macaulay, On John Dryden (1828)
Misattributed

“Even the most morbid of the rape ranters have a childlike faith in the perfectibility of the universe, which they see as blighted solely by nasty men. They simplistically project outward onto a mythical "patriarchy" their own inner conflicts and moral ambiguities.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 25

Men, Faith, Universe

“I begin my reign with the desire to put myself at the service of all Belgians. I will work for it in perfect agreement with the government and in accordance with the constitution.”

Philippe of Belgium (1960) seventh king of the Belgians

Divided Belgium has a new King Philippe http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10193295/Divided-Belgium-has-a-new-King-Philippe.html, Telegraph (July 21, 2013)

“I grew up always wanting to be an artist, and it was in high school when I started to really like writing. I was a junior in high school thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and I thought it would be great if I could find a job in which I could both draw and paint … and write which was this new thing that I loved. And I thought children's picture books would be the perfect job for me. It was a great combination of those skills and that's when I decided that's what I wanted to do.”

Kevin Henkes (1960) American children's illustrator and writer

Some Kids' Books Are Worth The Wait: 'They Do Take Time,' Says Kevin Henkes https://www.npr.org/2015/09/22/442521229/some-kids-books-are-worth-the-wait-they-do-take-time-says-kevin-henkes (September 22, 2015)

Love, Life, Children, Books

“It is at any rate evident, that a large and ample province remains for the exercise of Providence, without its being naturally perceptible by us; because obscurity, when applied to the interruption of laws, bears a necessary proportion to the imperfection of our knowledge when applied to the laws themselves, or rather to the effects which these laws, under their various and incalculable combinations, would of their own accord produce. And if it be said, that the doctrine of Divine Providence, by reason of the ambiguity under which its exertions present themselves, can be attended with no practical influenceupon our conduct; that, although we believe ever so firmly that there is a Providence, we must prepare, and provide, and act, as if there were none; I answer, that this is admitted: and that we further allege, that so to prepare, and so to provide, is consistent with the most perfect assurance of the reality of a Providence; and not only so, but that it is probably one advantage of the present state of our information, that our provisions and preparations are not disturbed by it. Or if it be still asked, Of what use at all then is the doctrine, if it neither alter our measures nor regulate our conduct? I answer again, that it is of the greatest use, but that it is a doctrine of sentiment and piety, not (immediately at least) of action or conduct; that it applies to the consolation of men's minds, to their devotions, to the excitement of gratitude, the support of patience, the keeping alive and the strengthening of every motive for endeavouring to please our Maker; and that these are great uses.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 26 : The Goodness of the Deity.

Men, Law, Exercises, Motivation

“I have heard that it was the perfection of the administration of criminal justice to take care that the punishment should come to few and the example to many.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Eaton's Case (1793)

Justice

“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

Light, Speed, Flying

“It is commonly said that seeing is believing, but feeling is the very truth. I shall, therefore, give the result of my experience of hypnotism in my own person. In the middle of September, 1844, I suffered from a most severe attack of rheumatism, implicating the left side of the neck and chest, and the left arm. At first the pain was moderately severe, and I took some medicine to remove it; but, instead of this, it became more and more violent, and had tormented me for three days, and was so excruciating, that it entirely deprived me of sleep for three nights successively, and on the last of the three nights I could not remain in any one posture for five minutes, from the severity of the pain. On the forenoon of the next day, whilst visiting my patients, every jolt of the carriage I could only compare to several sharp instruments being thrust through my shoulder, neck, and chest. A full inspiration was attended with stabbing pain, such as is experienced in pleurisy. When I returned home for dinner I could neither turn my head, lift my arm, nor draw a breath, without suffering extreme pain. In this condition I resolved to try the effects of hypnotism. I requested two friends, who were present, and who both understood the system, to watch the effects, and arouse me when I had passed sufficiently into the condition; and, with their assurance that they would give strict attention to their charge, I sat down and hypnotised myself, extending the extremities. At the expiration of nine minutes they aroused me, and, to my agreeable surprise, I was quite free from pain, being able to move in any way with perfect ease. I say agreeably surprised, on this account; I had seen like results with many patients; but it is one thing to hear of pain, and another to feel it. My suffering was so exquisite that I could not imagine anyone else ever suffered so intensely as myself on that occasion; and, therefore, I merely expected a mitigation, so that I was truly agreeably surprised to find myself quite free from pain. I continued quite easy all the afternoon, slept comfortably all night, and the following morning felt a little stiffness, but no pain. A week thereafter I had a slight return, which I removed by hypnotising myself once more; and I have remained quite free from rheumatism ever since, now nearly six years.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

In “The First Account of Self-Hypnosis Quoted in “The Original Philosophy of Hypnotherapy (from The Discovery of Hypnosis)”.

Pain, Truth, Way, Feeling

“Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nature

Wisdom, Truth, Effort, Animals

“British Liberalism is not going to repeat the errors of Continental Liberalism. The fate of Continental Liberalism should warn them of that danger. It has been swept on one side before it had well begun its work, because it refused to adapt itself to new conditions. The Liberalism of the Continent concerned itself exclusively with mending and perfecting the machinery which was to grind corn for the people. It forgot that the people had to live whilst the process was going on, and people saw their lives pass away without anything being accomplished. But British Liberalism has been better advised. It has not abandoned the traditional ambition of the Liberal party to establish freedom and equality; but side by side with this effort it promotes measures for ameliorating the conditions of life for the multitude.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Swansea (1 October 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 51.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life, Fate, People, Error

“You can't make a perfect painting. We can see perfection in our minds. But we can't make a perfect painting.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

interview with Joan Simon, 1995 in Perfection is in the Mind, p. 86; as quoted in A House Divided: American Art Since 1955, Anne M. G. Wagner, Univ. of California Press, 2012, p. 263
1980 - 2000

Painting

“If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary. This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Letter to William L. Sharkey, governor of Mississippi (June 1865).
Quote

Color, Reading, Personality

“Even perfect program verification can only establish that a program meets its specification. [… ] Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.”

Fred Brooks No Silver Bullet

Page 195.
No Silver Bullet (1986)

“[were I] not detained here by age and by the gout which renders me useless, I should go there to enjoy with my own eyes and admire the perfection of such worthy works.... [I pray] look upon all the marvels of your hand.... before I close my eyes forever.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

In a letter to Francois Duquesnoy, 1639-1640 ; as quoted in Rembrandts Eyes', by w:Simon Schrama, Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York 1999, p. 180
The sculptor Francois Duquesnoy, then living drawing heightened with in Rome, had sent him models of work done for a tomb monument, Windsor Castle, Rubens praised them with his usual expansive generosity. Rubens had begun to resign himself to his end, but could write still some letters
1625 - 1640

Age

“Much has been said of late about world ideals. But I prefer to think of the ideal for America. I like to think there's something more than the patriotism and practical wisdom of the founding fathers. It's good to believe that maybe destiny held this New World republic to be the supreme example of representative democracy and orderly liberty by which humanity is inspired to higher achievement. It is idle to think we have attained perfection, but there is the satisfying knowledge that we hold orderly processes for making our government reflect the heart and mind of the Republic.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, The American Soldier (1920)

Wisdom, World, Democracy, Knowledge

“It will be seen that what I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive, and a just evaluation of feeling; the justice of the evaluation persisting even into the sound of the least important syllable. Such a poem is a perfect and complete act of the spirit; it calls upon the full life of the spirit; it is difficult of attainment, but I am aware of no good reason to be contented with less.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention : Section III : The Scansion of Free Verse
Primitivism and Decadence : A Study of American Experimental Poetry (1937)

Life, Justice, Feeling, Motivation

“Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933)

Life, Law, Happiness

“The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter—perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain it's presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Propositions, 2
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

Flowers, Appearance, Joy

“There's never a perfect bipartisan bill in the eyes of a partisan.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

The Economist, December 18, 2010, p. 74
2010s

“An audience is just a mirror of what's happening on stage, and if what's happening on stage has love in it—real feeling and conviction and strength and purity—then we are truly reflecting them, because it is their own nature that is coming back. Everything is. The music is. For me, the only barriers in music are the barriers in the musician and in the equipment he has to use. If a musician has no barriers within himself, then there are no barriers within his music. His only battle is with the problems of expressing his true nature against the difficulties of the real world—the limits of his amplifiers and his guitar or his piano or whatever, the limits the outer world places upon the natural perfection of the spirit.”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

When describing the sources of his music
New York Times interview (1972)

Love, World, Music, Feeling

“When, in a nation, a despotic ruler grows powerful and the pillars of oppression are erected, it is necessary to effect changes. Whenever possible, they should employ good counsel and perfect advice to repel oppression. If they can, they should change the pillars of tyranny and install reformers in the place of the corrupt. If the despotic king declines to halt the oppression and to change his ministers, then naturally those who are able have the obligation to stop the oppression themselves. They should not, however, senselessly shed blood or slaughter individuals. Rather, they should employ advice and divine counsel to defeat those criminals and to change conditions. For, the power of those tyrants derives from the mob. Whenever these throngs are scattered, the despot’s power is weakened. Naturally, in this situation this course of action is more insightful and more prudent.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Treatise on Kingship

Nature, Change

“Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Often attributed to Giorgio Vasari, while in the text Vasari attributes these words to Leonardo da Vinci in: Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects as translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster (1852), Vol. 2;
Misattributed

Men, Idea, Thinking

“Mitt did not quite forget his perfect land. He remembered it, though a little fuzzily, next time the wind dropped, but he did not set off to look for it again. It was plain to him that soldiers only brought you back again if you went. It made him sad. When an inkling of it came to him in silence, or in scents, or, later, if the wind hummed a certain note, or a storm came shouting in from the sea and he caught the same note in the midst of its noise, he thought of his lost perfect place and felt for a moment as if his heart would break.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Dalemark Quartet, Drowned Ammet (1977), p. 233.

Sadness, Silence, Time, Heart

“Smith had no illusion that this would be easy to do, nor did he suffer from the delusion that such an exercise would, in any sense, be perfect. But he did have the conviction that the exercise could still be very useful, and the best should not be made into an enemy of the good.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

“Values and justice”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2012, 101–108
2010s, “Values and Justice”, 2012

Exercises, Sense, Suffering

“It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log, dry, bald and sere:
A lily of a day,
Is fairer far, in May,
Although it fall, and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

LXX, To the Immortal Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison, lines 65-74
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Life, Beauty, Flowers, Tree

“The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Idea

“What has here been remarked in general of the prophets as the champions of religious progress is also true in particular of him who as the most perfect blossom of the religious development of Israel constituted also the essential force of the new Christian religion—Jesus of Nazareth. Against this logical conclusion of the evolutionary view of history the representatives of the new faith present the most obstinate resistance.”

Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908) German Protestant theologian

Source: Evolution and Theology (1900), p. 12.

Faith, Religion, History

“Everyone else on the planet, from the lowest amoebae to the great blue whale, expresses all their component elements in a perfect dance with the world around them. Only human beings have unfulfilled lives.”

Nicholas Lore (1944) American social scientist

Wholeliving, 2004

World, Dance

“What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Mikhail Baryshnikov at the 1978 Kennedy Center Honours for Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, as quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0-09-173736-2 p. 255.

Hate, Secret, Thinking

“No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

in [1, John, 4:12, KJV]
First Letter of John

Love, God, Time

“All men saved from the scattering influences of society by a powerful incentive, a cause, or an ideal of individual perfection, seldom fear the danger of being distracted by comers and goers.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: What we live by (1932), p. 202

Men, Fear

“Never as neat or well organized as many descriptions suggest, in essence feudalism involved the exchange of grants of land for military and political service, sealed by personal oaths between the lord and the vassal. The castle has been called the perfect architectural expression of the European feudal age.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Overview: Castles in Context
Medieval castles (2005)

Age, Personality

“We…have enfranchised the whole adult and labouring population of these islands, saints and sinners alike, and are attempting the immense double enterprise not only of making each citizen count as one and an end in himself, but also of asking him to share effectively and intelligently in the responsibilities of municipal citizenship and imperial government…Democracy is still an aspiration and not a fact…What we have achieved is a democratic framework of government, which is not the same thing as a democratic society. We have perfected the machinery of popular government, and one immediate danger is that it may be seized and exploited in undemocratic ways for democratic ends. In the name of the sovereign people deeds may be done as cruel as those done by any Greek tyrant or mediaeval despot. It is terribly easy for those in power to confuse justice with the interest of the strong; but oppression of the few by the many is just as ugly as its opposite.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 39-40.
1930

People, Justice, Way, Democracy

“Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it reverently, so does perfect hate.”

John Buchan book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. IX

Love, Hate, Fear

“But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

William James, of Santayana's The Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), in a letter to George H. Palmer (1900), as quoted in George Santayana : A Biography (2003) by John McCormick
Misattributed

“I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness. I desire from the abyss of my own nothingness and vileness to cry unto God that He might cause me to do as I ought, and to be as I ought.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 331.

God, Lie, Feeling, Heart

“Culture, when it loses its sacred sense, loses all sense. With the disappearance of the sacred, which imposed limits to the perfection which could be attained by the profane, arises one of the most dangerous illusions of our civilization—the illusion that there are no limits to the changes that human life can undergo, that society is 'in principle' an endlessly flexible thing, and that to deny this flexibility and this perfectibility is to deny man's total autonomy and thus to deny man himself.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

"The Revenge of the Sacred in Secular Culture" (1973)

Life, Sense, Change

“The outstanding personalities of Euclid and Archimedes demand chapters to themselves. Euclid, the author of the incomparable Elements, wrote on almost all the other branches of mathematics known in his day. Archimedes's work, all original and set forth in treatises which are models of scientific exposition, perfect in form and style, was even wider in its range of subjects. The imperishable and unique monuments of the genius of these two men must be detached from their surroundings and seen as a whole if we would appreciate to the full the pre-eminent place which they occupy, and will hold for all time, in the history of science.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Preface p. viii
A History of Greek Mathematics (1921) Vol. 1. From Thales to Euclid

Men, History, Mathematics, Science

“If you were good enough, there would be no need of confessing Christ at all. It is just because you are not good enough, that Christ says to you, "Follow me." He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. It is not the perfect people whom He wants in His church, but those who have a deep sense of their own imperfection, and who believe that His strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 155.

People, Sense, Christ

“Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us with firm and cheerful trust endure all trials, discharge all duties, accept all sacrifices, fulf1ll the law of universal and impartial love, and adopt as our own that cause of truth, righteousness, humanity, liberty, and holiness, — which being the cause of the All-Good, cannot but triumph over all powers of evil. Let us rise into blest assurance that everywhere and forever we are enfolded, penetrated, guarded, guided, kept by the power of the Father and Friend, who can never forsake us; and that all spirits who have begun to seek, know, love, and serve the All-Perfect One on earth shall be reunited in a celestial home, and be welcomed together into the freedom of the universe, and the perpetual light of His presence.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 17

Love, Truth, Law, Home

“Another perfect catastrophe is just waiting to happen, watching for the moment to transpire. Another perfect catastrophe is just dying to go down. It's only looking for the perfect place and time.”

Tod A (1965) American musician

"Another Perfect Catastrophe", The Ponzi Scheme (May 5, 1998).
Lyrics, Firewater

Time, Waiting

“Nothing too long imagined can be perfect in a worldly way.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

June 1932 Henry and June
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Way, Imagination

“Thus absolute truth is indestructible. Being indestructible, it is eternal. Being eternal, it is self-existent. Being self-existent, it is infinite. Being infinite, it is vast and deep. Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and intelligent. It is because it is vast and deep that it contains all existence. It is because it is transcendental and intelligent that it embraces all existence. It is because it is infinite and eternal that it fulfils or perfects all existence. In vastness and depth it is like the Earth. In transcendental intelligence it is like Heaven. Infinite and eternal, it is the Infinite itself.”

Zisi (-481–-402 BC) Chinese philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean, pp. 124–125

Truth, Intelligence

“The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Section 4 : Sceptical Doubts Concerning The Operations of The Understanding
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Nature

“Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.”

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light

Love, Study

“The traditional picture of the blind old singer of Chios is largely made up of memories that go back to the time when a poet was a vates— a priestly and God-inspired seer. His blindness is merely the outward sign of the inward light that fills his being and enables him to see things others cannot see. This bodily infirmity expresses— as does the lameness of the divine smith Hephaestus—a second idea that was current in primitive times, that a maker of poems, ornaments and other products of handicraft can only come from the ranks of those who are unfit for war and foray. But apart from this feature, the legendary ‘Homer’ is an almost perfect example of the mythical poet who was still half-divine, a wonder-worker and a prophet. We find the clearest embodiment of this idea in Orpheus, the primeval singer who had his harp from Apollo and instruction in the art of song from the Muse herself; with his music he could move not merely men and beasts but even rocks and could reclaim Eurydice from the bonds of death.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter III. Greece and Rome

Death, Men, God, War

“…the German's defense was stretched out like a spandex at Miami Beach…once again the pure genius of Raúl to anticipate the throw-in…the throw-in is perfection…sublime…and the finish is the personification of grace under pressure…”

Ray Hudson (1955) English footballer

[Mandis, Steven G., The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet, 2016, BenBella Books, https://books.google.fi/books/about/The_Real_Madrid_Way.html?id=IEbQDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y, 978-1-942952-54-1]
After Madrid's Raúl had timed his run and sent the ball left-footed past Bayer Leverkusen's Hans-Jörg Butt.
2002 UEFA Champions League Final

“Libertarianism offers an alternative to coercive government that should appeal to peaceful, productive people everywhere.
No, a libertarian world isn't a perfect one. There will still be inequality, poverty, crime, corruption, man's inhumanity to man. But, unlike the theocratic visionaries, the pie-in-the-sky socialist utopians, or the starry-eyed Mr. Fixits of the New Deal and Great Society, libertarians don't promise you a rose garden. Karl Popper once said that attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. Libertarianism holds out, not the goal of a perfect society, but of a better and freer one. It promises a world in which more of the decisions will be made in the right way by the right person: you.”

David Boaz (1953) libertarian, author and editor

Libertarianism: A Primer (1997) Ch. 1 : The Coming Libertarian Age"; A Note on Labels: Why "Libertarian"? http://www.libertarianism.org/ex-3.html

People, World, Peace, Way

“They've gotta stop reporting wind chill. That's nonsense. It really is. I don't know where they came up with it, why they came up with it, but it's a lie. They come on, "Well, it's 27 degrees today, but with the wind chill, it's minus 3." … WELL, THEN IT'S MINUS 3, ASSHOLE! I don't need to know what the weather was like if the conditions were perfect!”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Rules of Enragement (2003)

Lie, Weather

“Hopelessness means renunciation of all hopes. Aimlessness means renunciation of all aims. Helplessness means renunciation of all help. No master, no disciple, means renunciation of spirituality. And the New Life I have in mind eventually means absolute renunciation. Therefore, if any one asks you what this New Life is, say, 'Absolute and perfect renunciation.' If they ask, 'Renunciation of what?”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

say, 'Of everything — aims, hopes, help and life itself.
Statement during the New Life period (1949 - 1952), 10:3481
Lord Meher (1986)

Life, Hope, Help

“And this [experimental] science verifies all natural and man-made things in particular, and in their appropriate discipline, by the experimental perfection, not by arguments of the still purely speculative sciences, nor through the weak, and imperfect experiences of practical knowledge. And therefore, this is the matron of all preceding sciences, and the final end of all speculation.”
Et hæc scientia certificat omnia naturalia et artificialia in particulari et in propria disciplina, per experientiam perfectam; non per argumenta, ut scientiæ pure speculativae, nec per debiles et imperfecta experientias ut scientiae operativæ. Et ideo hæc est domina omnium scientiarum præcedentium, et finis totius speculationis.

Roger Bacon book Opus Tertium

Ch 13 ed. J. S. Brewer Opera quadam hactenus inedita (1859) p. 46
Opus Tertium, c. 1267

Nature, Knowledge, Science

“As everybody knows, but the haters & losers refuse to acknowledge, I do not wear a “wig.” My hair may not be perfect but it’s mine.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Twitter https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/327077073380331525 (24 April 2013) 2010s, 2013

“In that year [Einstein] had roughly equal numbers of large and small cats. Therefore, quite logically, he cut two holes in each door: a large one for the large cats, and a small one for the small cats. It made perfect sense. … A hole should have a meaningful existence, and the small cats might be offended if a personalized nothing was not prepared for them.”

João Magueijo (1967) Portuguese scientist

pg. 71
Faster than the Speed of Light

Cats, Sense, Personality

“The intrinsic decorative urge should not be eradicated. It is one of humankind's deep-rooted, primordial urges. Primitive people decorated their implements and cult objects with a desire to beautify and enhance.... it is a sense emanating from the urge for perfection and creative accomplishment.”

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) Swiss artist

Quote of 1927, on The Artstory: 'Sophie Taeuber-Arp http://www.theartstory.org/artist-taeuber-arp-sophie.htm, Swiss Multi-media, applied arts, performance artist, and textile designer'

People, Sense

“And have the courage to accept that you’re not perfect, nothing is, and no one is — and that’s OK.”

Katie Couric (1957) American journalist

Graduation speech at Williams College, 2007 http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0029-couric.htm

Courage

“[I]f we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 11.

Music, Home, Mood

“You are all just perfect little satellites
Spinning round and round this broken Earthy life”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"Satellite Call"
Lyrics, The Blessed Unrest (2013)

Life

“Unfortunately… the philosophy of Aristotle laid it down as a principle, that the celestial motions were regulated by laws proper to themselves, and bearing no affinity to those which prevail on earth. By thus drawing a broad and impassable line of separation between celestial and terrestrial mechanics, it placed the former altogether out of the pale of experimental research, while it at the same time impeded the progress of the latter by the assumption of principles respecting natural and unnatural motions, hastily adopted from the most superficial and cursory and remark, undeserving even the name of observation. Astronomy therefore continued for ages a science of mere record, in which theory had no part, except in so far as it attempted to conciliate the inequalities of the celestial motions with that assumed law of uniform circular revolution which was alone considered consistent with the perfection of the heavenly mechanism.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

Source: A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), Ch.3 Of Cosmical Phenomena

Age, Law, Nature, Science

“The U. S. stock market was now a class system, rooted in speed, of haves and have-nots. The haves paid for nanoseconds; the have-nots had no idea that a nanosecond had value. The haves enjoyed a perfect view of the market; the have-nots never saw the market at all. What had once been the world’s most public, most democratic, financial market had become, in spirit, something like a private viewing of a stolen work of art.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 69

World, Art, Idea, Speed

“If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 353

Books, Way, Reading

“You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad — if you're indifferent, Endsville.”

Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American singer and film actor

As quoted in Moment of Grace: The American City in the 1950s (2002) by Michael Johns.

World, Indifference

“There is a deep irony in the fact that the more nearly an ideal is brought to realization, the more acutely do the saints and heroes who have committed themselves to the task, experience a vehement sense of failure in not having perfected their ideal in its totality; and inversely, the more perfunctory is the pursuit of an ideal, the less are people troubled by discrepancies between practice and principle.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

People, Failure, Sense

“If the solution is possible, then, it will only be so by the fact that, on the one hand, perfect intelligence or reason is the essence of God, — who therefore determines all things, not by compulsion, but only in his eternal thought, which views all real possibilities whatever; and that, on the other hand, the spirit other than God also has its freedom in self-active intelligence. This granted, the range of its possibilities is precisely the range of reason again, and so is to God perfectly knowable and known, since it harmonises in its whole with the Eternal Thought that grasps all possibilities, though it is not at all predestined by this”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.327

God, Intelligence, Freedom

“Stalin is the perfect example of what I was talking about. To simply call him corrupt tells us nothing useful. What circumstances put him into power? What objective pressures, as well as subjective characteristics, led him to make the decisions he made? I'm currently reading Trotsky's writings from 1932 (scary how accurately he predicts the way WWII would play out), and analyzing the details of why Stalin did as he did is far more complex and useful than just, 'power corrupts.'
And it is even more true for the other great dictators of the 20th Century: I don’t think you can even say that Hitler and Mussolini were corrupt: they came to power in order to do the very things they did.”

Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author

"Truisms rot brains; absolute truisms rot brains absolutely" (9 August 2010) http://dreamcafe.com/words/2010/08/09/truisms-rot-brains-absolute-truisms-rot-brains-absolutely/ The Dream Café

Way, Thinking, Decision, Reading

“The biblical system of punishment is just perfect. It's perfect and we are doing nothing similar to the biblical system.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

-Edited Version- Pastor Steve Anderson interviews Dr Kent Hovind (Re-upload) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y4J7o62-w8, Youtube (January 22, 2015)

“The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story", published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler(1976)

Problem

“Therefore, no one should misunderstand Me. By Avatarically Revealing and Confessing My Divine Status to one and all and All, I am not indulging in self-appointment, or in illusions of grandiose Divinity. I am not claiming the "Status" of the "Creator-God" of exoteric (or public, and social, and idealistically pious) religion. Rather, by Standing Firm in the Divine Position (As I Am)—and (Thus and Thereby) Refusing to be approached as a mere man, or as a "cult"-figure, or as a "cult"-leader, or to be in any sense defined (and, thereby, trapped, and abused, or mocked) as the "man in the middle"—I Am Demonstrating the Most Perfect Fulfillment (and the Most Perfect Integrity, and the Most Perfect Fullness) of the Esoteric (and Most Perfectly Non-Dual) Realization of Reality.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/first_word/complete_text.html

God, Religion, Reality, Sense

“These distinctions make sense only when AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is assumed (hence Spinoza's failure, who assumed mere A). Just as AR is the whole positive content of perfection, so CW, or the conception of the Creator-and-the-Whole-of-what-he-has-created as constituting one life, the super-whole which in its everlasting essence is uncreated (and does not necessitate just the parts which the whole has) but in its de facto concreteness is created — this panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations. Thus ARCW, or absolute-relative panentheism, is the one doctrine that really states the whole of what all theists, if not all atheists as/well, are implicitly talking about.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Charles Hartshorne, in Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1964) ISBN 020800498X p. 348
G - L

Life, Failure, Sense, Parting

“Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds. Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebenica.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century (2007), p. 332

Fools, Happiness

“If America says to you today that they are proud of the fact that, for two hundred years, they have been trying to make their union more perfect, it sounds very reasonable. But, in Nigeria, you are not even allowed to question your union, which is ridiculous.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

Question