Quotes about perfection

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“Change happens. Hope happens. Not perfection. Not every bit of cruelty and sadness and poverty and disease suddenly stricken from the earth. There will still be problems. But with each new candidate that surprises you with a victory that you supported, a spark of hope happens.”

“There are any number of reasons America emerged from its humble beginnings as a cluster of colonies to become the most prosperous, most powerful nation on earth. There is the hard work, the resilience, and the character of our people. There is the ingenuity and enterprising spirit of our entrepreneurs and innovators. There are the ideals of opportunity, equality, and freedom that have not only inspired our people to perfect our own union, but inspired others to perfect theirs as well. But from the very start, there was also something more. A steadfast commitment to serve, to fight, and if necessary, to die, to preserve America and advance the ideals we cherish. It’s a commitment witnessed at each defining moment along the journey of this country. It’s what led a rag-tag militia to face British soldiers at Lexington and Concord. It’s what led young men, in a country divided half slave and half free, to take up arms to save our union. It’s what led patriots in each generation to sacrifice their own lives to secure the life of our nation, from the trenches of World War I to the battles of World War II, from Inchon and Khe Sanh, from Mosul to Marja.”

“So progress is not inevitable. History does not always march forward. History can travel sideways and sometimes backwards. Building trust after years of conflict takes time. Being able to look past the scars of violence takes courage. Securing the gains of freedom and democracy requires good faith and strength of will, and tolerance and respect for diversity, and it requires vigilance from all citizens. The American people know well that rights and freedoms are not given; they have to be won through struggle and through discipline, and persistence and faith. And it’s often young people who have led these struggles; who have compelled us to slowly but surely perfect our own union in America over time.”

“Of course, neither the United States nor Europe are perfect in adherence to our ideals, nor do we claim to be the sole arbiter of what is right or wrong in the world. We are human, after all, and we face difficult choices about how to exercise our power. But part of what makes us different is that we welcome criticism, just as we welcome the responsibilities that come with global leadership.”

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

“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.”

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.”

“After demonstrating the practicability of this method of transmission, the thought naturally occurred to me to use the earth as a conductor, thus dispensing with all wires. Whatever electricity may be, it is a fact that it behaves like an incompressible fluid, and the earth may be looked upon as an immense reservoir of electricity, which, I thought, could be disturbed effectively by a properly designed electrical machine. Accordingly, my next efforts were directed toward perfecting a special apparatus which would be highly effective in creating a disturbance of electricity in the earth.”

“It has been argued that the perfection of guns of great destructive power will stop warfare. So I myself thought for a long time, but now I believe this to be a profound mistake. Such developments will greatly modify, but not arrest it. On the contrary, I think that every new arm that is invented, every new departure that is made in this direction, merely invites new talent and skill, engages new effort, offers new incentive, and so only gives a fresh impetus to further development. Think of the discovery of gun-powder. Can we conceive of any more radical departure than was effected by this innovation? Let us imagine ourselves living in that period: would we not have thought then that warfare was at an end, when the armor of the knight became an object of ridicule, when bodily strength and skill, meaning so much before, became of comparatively little value? Yet gunpowder did not stop warfare: quite the opposite it acted as a most powerful incentive.”

“By the time His Highness attained his majority, he had completed his education and become a perfect master of Sanskrit, English, Persian, Hindustani, Maharatti, Telugu, Canarese, Tamil and Malayalam.”

“Two sensuous lovers are not two friends. Much rather are they two enemies, closely attached to each other. I know it, I know it! There are perfect couples, no doubt — perfection always exists somewhere — but I mean us others, all of us, the ordinary people! I know!”

“She awakened your soul, but the soft whispers of wisdom led elsewhere. The perfect love, a true connection at a time not willing to wait.”

“I'm the reflection of perfection, the number one selection.”

“Whether or not we can get together, remember well that art “lives” where absolute freedom is. With all the training thrown to nowhere, with a mind (if there is such a verbal substance) perfectly unaware of its own working, with the “self” vanishing nowhere, the art of JKD attains its perfection.”

“Mind...cleansed through sadhana (spiritual practices)...serves as a perfect reflector of the spiritual reality.”

“Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her.”

“I see without eyes, and I hear without ears. I feel without feeling and taste without tasting. I know neither form nor measure; for without seeing I yet behold an operation so divine that the words I first used, perfection, purity, and the like, seem to me now mere lies in the presence of truth. . . . Nor can I any longer say, “My God, my all.””

“Society may not be the most perfect, but without perfect people to exist, it cannot either.”

“Mood swings are constantly haunting us, even in our dreams, from achieving perfection.”

“Since human knowledge is not perfect, a more knowledgeable person is not always right.”

“All struggle becomes celebration, ultimately, in the mind of the Master, who understands that every circumstance and condition has been produced co-jointly, by all of the Souls collaboratively creating that experience or that event, in order that each of the Souls might have a perfect contextual field within which to announce and to declare, to express and to fulfill at the next level, Who They Really Are. This is about spiritual growth. This is about spiritual expansion. This is about the Soul’s evolution.”

“You are deeply loved by God. Do you know that? I mean, do you really know that? Because if you do, you will move through life without fear. You will know that only Perfection can occur.”

“Once, long ago in her world, a sunny day in spring was her favorite, but now a sunny day in winter delights her more. It is the perfect metaphor for their love.
Sunshine on ice.
She warms his frost. He cools her fever.”

“One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid… One wants… But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?”

“You are perfect for a female."
"Not where I come from."
"Then they're using the wrong standard.”

“There is no greater bore than perfection.”

“O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives”

“There is nothing perfect. There is only life.”

“Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.”

“There is a perfection in everything that cannot be owned”

“You don't have to get it perfect, you just have to get it going. Babies don't walk the first time they try, but eventually they get it right”

“You know I used to be the back porch poet with my book of lines, always hoping knowing all the time, I'm probably never gonna find the perfect rhyme… For heavier things”

“There are no secrets to success: don’t waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.”

“Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.”

“My life is perfect even when it's not.”

“A perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God.”

“It was finally becoming clear to her that love wasn't about finding someone perfect to marry. Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person, and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability.”

“Make it bend — trees are flexible, so they don’t snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch — perfect trees don’t exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.”

“Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.”

“Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them.”

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.”

“Each of you is perfect the way you are… and you can use a little improvement.”

“Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings”

“The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.”

“perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch.”

“If you're looking for Mr. Perfect, you‟re going to spend your whole life being disappointed, because he doesn‟t exist. You have to get the best deal you can, but there will always be problems.”

“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“the number 108 is held to be the most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to 9, which is three threes. And 3, of course, is the number representing supreme balance.”

“You can use your idealism to further your aims, if you realize that nothing is Nirvana, nothing is perfect.”

“I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zip code… You don't love someone because they're perfect… You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”

“In the Night World there's this idea called the soulmate principle. It says that every person has one soulmate out there, just one. And that person is perfect for you and is your destiny.”

“I think her flaws make me love her even more. She's not perfect, but she's perfect to me”

“If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.”

“I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.”

“And somewhere in heaven, Versace sheds a single, perfect tear.”

“There are moments in your life that, when you look back at them, you realize were perfect.”

“That's what came from having romance in your soul. You believe in things like love at first sight and perfect presents.”

“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.”

“It's the perfect solution. We argue all the time. We can't stand each other. It's like we're already married.”

“Perfect date material, she thought. A vampire with the social equivalent of road rage.

---Beth about Wrath”

“Can't you home school me?" Nate pleaded.
"You would never do any work." (Nate's mom)
"Sounds perfect!”

“Child of Hades, what more could I do to you? You are perfect! So much sorrow and pain!’ Nico gasped. His eyes flew open.”

“There's no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.”

“Irony, perfect definition: that for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want once I possessed it.”

“We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.”

“As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?”

“I don't mind being called a liar. I am. I am a marvelous liar. But I hate being called a liar when I´m telling the perfect truth.”

“The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”

“I wished that love could be simple, that it was always given and returned in the same measure, equally and at the same time, that all the planets aligned in a perfect way to dispel all doubts, that it was easy to understand and never painful.”

“Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.”

“Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.”

“But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. This is rare and pure and perfect.”

“It made perfect sense, and at the same time nothing seemed to.”

“If a life can be ruined in a single moment, a moment of betrayal, or violence, or ill luck, then why can a life not also be saved, be worth living, be made, by just a few pure moments of perfection?”

“Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try." (Adrian)”

“I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation.”

“Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.”

“You can't always get the perfect moment. Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can under the circumstances.”

“To live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart - this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal.”

“That sounds terrific. Just you, your comatose wife, your shell-shocked son, and you daughter who hates your guts. Not to mention that your two kids may be in love with each other. Yeah, that sounds like a perfect family reunion.”

“The real question is, can you love the real me? Not the perfect person you want me to be, not that image you had of me, but who I really am.”

“Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation, because there is no Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right, because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person.”

“Why don't I just pretend I'm on camera, Plutarch?" I say.
"Yes! Perfect. One is always much braver with an audience," he says. "Look at the courage Peeta just displayed!"
It's all I can do not to slap him.”

“It is too easy to say 'what if' and paint a picture of a perfect world.”

“I remember her telling me once that rabbits were the gnomes in attendance to the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course.”

“Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds”

“He was Will, in all his perfect imperfection; Will, whose heart was as easy to break as it was carefully guarded; Will, who loved not wisely but entirely and with everything he had.”

“Nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard and really amazing is to give up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

“Perfect love did that to a person, and this had been perfect.”

“The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love.”

“But I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.”

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.”

“But he had been in love once, that he knew. Once and only once, and a long time ago. And it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that to a person and this had been perfect.”

“No religion is perfect, not after man gets through with it.”

“Run first,' Shane said. 'Mourn later.'
It was the perfect motto for Morganville.”

“But beauty is about finding the right fit, the most natural fit, To be perfect, you have to feel perfect about yourself --- avoid trying to be something you're not. For a goddess, that's especially hard. We can change so easily.
-Aphrodite”

“Perfection is the satin-lined casket of creativity and originality. If you are a perfectionist, at least stop telling everybody you're one and try to get over it yourself, alone in your home with the lights off”

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”