Quotes about perfection (2754 quotes, page 2)

“The life of this people greatly accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat indolent and melancholy... To repose on voluptuous ottomans and smoke superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection; to court the air in a carved caïque, by shores which are a perpetual scene; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb; this is, I think, a far more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing-rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Edward Lytton Bulwer from Constantinople, Turkey (27 December 1830), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 174

Drawing , Nature , Thinking , Life

“Venice by moonlight is an enchanted city; the floods of silver light upon the moresco architecture, the perfect absence of all harsh sounds of carts and carriages, the never-ceasing music on the waters, produced an effect on the mind which cannot be experienced, I am sure, in any other city in the world.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (c. 8 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume. I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 108

Light , Water , World , Music

“Verona is full of pictures which have never been painted. Every step excites emotion and gives rise to unaffected reflection. In the course of a short stroll, you may pass by a Roman amphitheatre, still used, then the castle of some petty prince of the Middle Ages, and while you are contrasting the sublime elevation of antiquity with the heterogeneous palace of a Scaliger your eyes light on a gate of Oriental appearance and fantastic ornament... The illusion is perfect, the eye rests with pain on the passing citizens in their modern costumes; you look for black velvets and gold chains, white feathers and red stockings.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 107

Painting , Pain , Light , Appearance

“Head of Christ by Morales, exactly as in the description in the pseudo letter of the Roman Proconsul. Morales well entitled to his surname of Divino... [T]he auburn locks seem only prevented from growing over the countenance by the moiety of the star which forms the glory: everything which can even be conceived as necessary to the formation of a face of perfect beauty, but nothing earthly in the appearance. You could not mistake the head for an Apollo or an Adonis. The eyes, beaming with human beauty, are nevertheless bright with the effulgence of celestial light, and fixed upon no particular object. They seem looking on the world. The nose is exquisitely formed, and the flesh tints seem immortal.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Diary entry while in Aix (c. 16 August 1824), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), pp. 52-53

Star , Light , Appearance , World

“I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

God , Business

“… I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think Who's that? and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say."
"I'd rather have something to say.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Thinking

“Who are you to judge the life i live
i know i'm not perfect and i don't live to be.
but before you start pointing fingers
make sure your hands are clean.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Life

“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Problem

“The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

The Choice http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1602/, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Life , Rage

“I don't know how to talk.
Oh! talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Love , Season

“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

Masanobu Fukuoka book The One-Straw Revolution

Source: The One-Straw Revolution

Nature , Joy , Happiness

“Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Business

“A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.”

William Shakespeare King John

Source: King John

Parting

“I never expect a perfect work from an imperfect man.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

“Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way… God can give us the perfect way.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Love , God , Way

“I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Variant: Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Hope , Way

“Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

God

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

World , Solitude

“Now he knew: They were real. Who’d make up a thing like this? Okay, one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord, but nobody was perfect.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

“The only thing that separates any one of us from excellence is fear and the opposite of fear is faith. I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for, perfection is God’s business.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

God , Fear , Faith , Business

“… the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

Variant: A past tense, future perfect kind of night.
Source: White Teeth (2000)

Lie , Past , Future

“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Life , People , Secret , World

“The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Christian Science (1907)
Context: When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic — for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

“… Any fool can love somebody who's perfect, somebody who does everything right. But that doesn't stretch your soul. Your soul only gets stretched when you can still love somebody after they've hurt you.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Hot Shot

Love , Fools , Soul , Hurt

“It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“No more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

Goodbye , World

“Would you rather live one perfect day over and over or live your life with no perfect days but just decent ones?”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Life

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

God , Memory , Past , Future

“When you are perfect, is there anywhere else to go?”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

“In school they told me "Practice makes perfect." And then they told me "Nobody's perfect," so then I stopped practicing.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

When the Leaves Blow Away (2006), I Still Have a Pony (2007)

School

“The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

Source: The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them.

“Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you go, and fix it along the way…”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

People , Way , Time , Waiting

“Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity… and here I am, reborn.”

Witold Gombrowicz book Ferdydurke

Source: Ferdydurke

Stupidity

“Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt
at being told that it is a fragment
awaiting perfection.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: Fireflies: A Collection of Proverbs, Aphorisms and Maxims

Smile

“I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.
It never is, sir.
Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.
I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Hope

“Mindfulness should guide all your actions and your spiritual endeavors. Whatever you do, always apply three essential points: undertake the action with the intention of doing so for the good of all beings; execute it with perfect concentration, free of attachment to concepts of subject, object, and action; and, finally, dedicate the merit you have created to the enlightenment of all beings.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

“It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Men

“Many of us lead family lives. At most, the members of a family stay together for the duration of a lifetime, often much less. While that fleeting moment of being together still lasts, we should try to remain in perfect harmony with each other, while observing the Dharma as much as possible. Night and day, let us turn our minds toward goodness, love, and compassion.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

Love , Family , Night

“Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Water , Singing , Dance

“Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

As quoted in Reporter in Red China (1966) by Charles Taylor

Travel , Country

“The challenge is not to be perfect…it’s to be whole”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

For women

“I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Oyster Bay, NY http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (7 July 1915)
1910s

“The universe doesn't allow perfection.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time

Universe

“Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Books , Idea

“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life

“I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

"My Hates" (1866).

Life , Beauty

“Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Source: Dear Life: Stories

“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP”

Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer

Leonard Nimoy's last tweet https://twitter.com/therealnimoy/status/569762773204217857 (February 23, 2015), quoted in Miriam Kramer, " Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy Dies at 83 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/star-trek-s-leonard-nimoy-dies-at-83/", Scientific American (February 27, 2015).

Life , Memory

“A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly unbelievers.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Faith

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Life , Books , Dead

“No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.”

Atul Gawande book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Source: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

“As I walk, I construct perfect sentences that I cannot remember later at home. I don’t know if the ineffable poetry of those sentences derived from what they were or from their never having been (written).”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Home

“You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Pleasure

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

Faith

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

Art

“Her sculptured face was as perfect as a painting.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Source: Eragon & Eldest

Painting

“Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Relationship , Love , Guy

“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Understanding

“If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

Men , God

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

Masanobu Fukuoka book The One-Straw Revolution

Source: The One-Straw Revolution (1975), Chapter 3, p. 119

“Nobody can be bad at everything. There’s no such thing as a perfect screwup.”

Jim Butcher book Mean Streets

Source: Mean Streets

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

They Call Me Coach (1972)
Variant: You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you

“Marriage is two imperfect people committing themselves to a perfect institution, by making perfect vows from imperfect lips before a perfect God.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

God , Marriage , People

“Love is rarely flawless,” Carter pointed out. “Humans delude themselves by thinking it has to be. It is the imperfection that makes love perfect.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Love , Making love , Thinking

“The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues.”

Christine de Pizan book The Book of the City of Ladies

Cellui ou celle en qui plus a vertus est le plus hault, ne la haulteur ou abbaisement des gens ne gist mie es corps selon le sexe mais en la perfeccion des meurs et des vertus.
Part I, ch. 9, p. 24.
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (c. 1405)
Source: The Book of the City of Ladies

Sex , Personality

“Not being perfect hurts.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Hurt

“Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew for no one was ever for a second taken in.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

People , Thinking , Time

“Strive for excellence, not perfection, because we don't live in a perfect world.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

World

“The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”

Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) German-Prussian soldier and military theorist

Dreams

“Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Reviews

Lie , Soul , Passion

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

Wedding , Love

“God is the perfect poet.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

God

“Those we love, we can grow to hate. And life… life can be perfect one minute and in shambles the next.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Through the Zombie Glass

Love , Life , Hate

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Playboy interview, May 1971
Context: There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Life , Hope , Learning

“Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.”

Sebastian Junger (1962) American author, journalist and documentarian

Source: Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

People , Art , Feeling , Time

“Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Simply Perfect

“But I am not perfect in my way of putting things
Because I lack the divine simplicity
Of being only what I appear to be.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Way , Appearance

“Later I had two green ones [alligator pears] — not so perfect. I painted them several times [c. 1920] when the men [American modernist artists, a. o. Marsden Hartley ] didn't think much of what I was doing. They were all discussing Paul Cézanne, with long involved remarks about the 'plastic quality' of his form and colour. I was an outsider. My colour and form were not acceptable. It had nothing to do with Cézanne or anything else. I didn't understand what they were talking about why one colour was better than another... Years later when I finally got to Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire in the south of France, I remember sitting there thinking, 'How could they attach all those analytical remarks to anything he did with that mountain?”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

All those entire words piled on top of that poor little mountain seemed too much.
1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Men , Mountain , Understanding , Thinking

“As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

People , Justice , Nature , Freedom

“Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the opposites are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of God is the way in which we understand this incredible fact that what cannot be, yet is.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

God , Way , Understanding , Nature

“I am reminded every day of my life, if not by events, then by my wife, that I am not a perfect man.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech in Mitchell, South Dakota; (1 June 2008)
2008

Life

“p>Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all the tribe together,
('Grouped' is not the right expression),
And, as happy chance would have it
Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded:
Each came out a perfect likeness.Then they joined and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of.
'Giving one such strange expressions -
Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely.)</p>
Hiawatha's Photographing
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

People , Stupidity , Dreams , Thinking

“Tessa is a perfectionist in all ways. For example, her hair always has to be perfect for an interview or competition, she makes me look goofy next to her.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Scott Moir, Interview for Wdish (2013)
Partnership with Scott Moir, Scott Moir about Virtue

Way

“The new hero-type favored by Aschenbach, and recurring in his books in a multiplicity of individual variants, had already been remarked upon at an early stage by a shrewd commentator, who had described his conception as that of “an intellectual and boyish manly virtue, that of a youth who clenches his teeth in proud shame and stands calmly on as the swords and spears pass through his body … the figure of Saint Sebastian is the most perfect symbol if not of art in general, then certainly of the kind of art in question.”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 2, as translated by David Luke

Books , Youth , Art , Question

“He that doth not as other men do, but endeavoureth that which ought to be done, shall thereby rather incur peril than preservation; for whoso laboureth to be sincerely perfect and good shall necessarily perish, living among men that are generally evil.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Men , Evil , Sincerity

“There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hard-working artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life’s task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 3, as translated by David Luke

Love , Life , Lie , Sea

“I’m here to tell you that, yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years. We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer — our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation. We’re not done perfecting our union, or living up to our founding creed that all of us are created equal; all of us are free in the eyes of God.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)

God , World , Education , Peace

“Serving means developing love. So unless you develop your love for God you cannot serve Him. Anywhere. Whenever you give some service, it is based on love. Just like mother giving service to the helpless child. Why? Love. So similarly, our life will be perfect when our love is perfect with the perfect Supreme Personality of Godhead. Then it is all right.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Lecture - Seattle, https://vanisource.org/wiki/680927_-_Lecture_-_Seattle (30 September 1968)
Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: Loving God

Love , Life , God , Personality

“Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

War , Children , Health , Education

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador

Letter from Jamaica (Summer 1815)

“I tell myself that anyone who says he has finished a canvas is terribly arrogant. Finished means complete, perfect, and I toil away without making any progress, searching, fumbling around, without achieving anything much.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Claude Monet, 1893; as quoted in: David W. Galenson (2009), Painting outside the Lines, p. 49
1890 - 1900

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“There is, however, one car company that has never lost sight of its role in the marketplace. Rolls-Royce. Sir Henry Royce, who founded the company back in 1904, really was a one-man quote machine. "Strive for perfection in everything you do." "Accept nothing as nearly right or good enough." "The quality remains long after the price is forgotten."”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it."
Rolls-Royce, p. 19
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Dreams , Cars , Quotes

“I have met Rossini, Cherubini, Baillot, etc.—also Kalkbrenner. You would not believe how curious I was about Herz, Liszt, Hiller, etc. — They are all zero beside Kalkbrenner. I confess that I have played like Herz, but would wish to play like Kalkbrenner. If Paganini is perfection, Kalkbrenner is his equal, but in quite another style.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

His letter to Tytus Woyciechowski in Poturzyn. Paris, 12 December 1831.

“They are perfect; how else?—they shall never change:
We are faulty; why not?—we have time in store.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Old Pictures in Florence, xvi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Change , Time

“It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. And contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidate - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice. We have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

God , People , Faith

“If I had written King Lear, I would regret it all my life afterwards. Because that work is so big, that its defects show as huge, its monstrous defects, things even minimal in between some scenes and their possible perfection. It's not the sun with spots; it's a broken greek statue.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 250
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Se eu tivesse escrito o Rei Lear, levaria com remorsos toda a minha vida de depois. Porque essa obra é tão grande, que enormes avultam os seus defeitos, os seus monstruosos defeitos, as coisas até mínimas que estão entre certas cenas e a perfeição possível delas. Não é o sol com manchas; é uma estátua grega partida.

Life , Sun

Quotes about perfection page 2

Quotes about perfection
page 2