"This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections."

Augustine, St. on perfection
6 fans of this quote   

"I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything."

Beecher, Henry Ward on perfection
3 fans of this quote   

"Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant."

Chateaubriand, Vicomte De on perfection   

"Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable."

Chesterfield, Lord on perfection   

"We never taste happiness in perfection, our most fortunate successes are mixed with sadness."

Corneille, Pierre on perfection
4 fans of this quote   

"Have no fear of perfection-you'll never reach it."

Dali, Salvador on perfection
11 fans of this quote   

"The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing."

Delacroix, Eugene on perfection
6 fans of this quote   

"Perfection has one grave defect. It is apt to be dull."

Maugham, W. Somerset on perfection
4 fans of this quote   

"Striving to better, oft we mar what's well."

Shakespeare, William on perfection
4 fans of this quote   

"One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love -- any love -- reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness."

Pavese, Cesare on infatuation
19 fans of this quote   

"Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances."

Pavese, Cesare on life   

"Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow."

Pavese, Cesare on literature
3 fans of this quote   

"A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man --the one he used to be."

Pavese, Cesare on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

"Love is the cheapest of religions."

Pavese, Cesare on love   

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life."

Krishnamurti, Jiddu on life
7 fans of this quote   

"Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life."

Alinsky, Saul on corruption   

"I am against government by crony."

Ickes, Harold L. on corruption   

"Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country."

Kraus, Karl on corruption   

"There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted."

Thoreau, Henry David on corruption
3 fans of this quote   

"One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable."

Rushdie, Salman on events   

"Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness."

Aristotle on beauty
4 fans of this quote   

"Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?"

Eliot, George on quarrels
5 fans of this quote   

"The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next."

Faulkner, William on quarrels
3 fans of this quote   

"A quarrel between friends, when made up, adds a new tie to friendship."

Francis De Sales, St. on quarrels
9 fans of this quote   

"The longer a man lives in this world the more he must be convinced that all domestic quarrels had better never be obtruded on the public; for, let the husband be right, or let him be wrong, there is always a sympathy existing for women which is certain to give the man the worst of it."

Haydon, Benjamin on quarrels   

"Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and loss of self control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite."

Lincoln, Abraham on quarrels
6 fans of this quote   

"Wise men do not quarrel with each other."

Proverb, Danish on quarrels
4 fans of this quote   

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

Shakespeare, William on quarrels
9 fans of this quote   

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends."

Adams, Dawn on books - reading
25 fans of this quote   

"When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes."

Bonaparte, Napoleon on battles
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat."

Eliot, George on battles
5 fans of this quote   

"No battle is worth fighting except the last one."

Powell, John Enoch on battles   

"In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win."

Shaw, George Bernard on battles   

"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad."

Roosevelt, Theodore on education
5 fans of this quote   

"Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former."

Mann, Horace on school   

"Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college."

Smith, Lillian on education   

"A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock."

Lamb, Charles on family   

"Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it."

Havel, Vaclav on absurdity
7 fans of this quote   

"Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy."

Havel, Vaclav on decay   

"You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society."

Havel, Vaclav on dissent