Quotes about perfection

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

— Joseph Addison

Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

— Angelique Arnauld

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

— St. Augustine

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.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Be ye therefore perfect, eve as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.

— Bible

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.

— Josh Billings

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

— Thomas Carlyle

Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.

— William Ellery Channing

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.

— Vicomte De Chateaubriand

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.

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Pierre Corneille

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

— Salvador Dali

The more perfect a thing is, the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Eugene Delacroix

Everything is perfect in the universe -- even your desire to improve it.

— Wayne Dyer

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

— George Eliot

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

— Epictetus

Every time, all the time, I'm a perfectionist. I feel I should never lose.

— Chris Evert

When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target.

— Geoffrey F. Fisher

Perfection is the child of time.

— Joseph Hall

No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.

— William Hazlitt

You can spend a lifetime, and, if you're honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.

— Charlton Heston

The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization.

— Karen Horney

Perfection is perfectly simple; fouling things up requires true skill.

— Doug Horton

The only nice thing about being imperfect is the joy it brings to others.

— Doug Larson

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.

— W. Somerset Maugham

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.

— Cardinal J. Newman

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.

— George Orwell

I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active --not more happy --nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

— Edgar Allan Poe

No barber shaves so close but another finds his work.

— English Proverb

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.

— Stanely J. Randall

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

— John Ruskin

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

— Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Measure not by the scale of perfection the meager product of reality.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

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

— William Shakespeare

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

— George Bernard Shaw

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection --even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano --is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher.

— James Stephens

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

The nearest to perfection that most people come is when filling out an employment application.

— Source Unknown

No one becomes perfect, but some become great.

— Source Unknown

It is no crime not to be perfect

— Source Unknown

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solitude is the enemy of well-being.

— John Updike

I have always suspected that correctness is the last refuge of those who have nothing to say.

— Friedrich Wasiman

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

— Beatrice Potter Webb

Perfecting is our destiny, but perfection never our lot.

— C. J. Weber

The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

— George F. Will

Perfection is our goal, excellence will be tolerated.

— J. Yahl

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.

— William Butler Yeats

Don't demand perfection. But insist on continuous improvement.

— Torley

Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.

— Vince Lombardi

To be neat in a culture that prizes neatness may bespeak a very different, less aberrant biological state than the same behavior in a culture that has adopted different values. Whether a particular behavioral style like perfectionism is deviant is very much a matter of cultural expections.

— Peter Kramer

Trying too hard to be too good, even when trying to be bad, is too good for the bad, too bad for the good.

— Dejan Stojanovic

Perfection seems sterile; it is final, no mystery in it; it's a product of an assembly line.

— Dejan Stojanovic

To accomplish the perfect perfection, a little imperfection helps.

— Dejan Stojanovic

Everything that looks too perfect is too perfect to be perfect.

— Dejan Stojanovic

We love the imperfect shapes in nature and in the works of art, look for an intentional error as a sign of the golden key and sincerity found in true mastery.

— Dejan Stojanovic

In trying to be perfect, he perfected the art of anonymity.

— Dejan Stojanovic

When there is noise and crowds, there is trouble; when everything is silent and perfect, there is just perfection and nothing to fill the air.

— Dejan Stojanovic

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.

— Henri Frederic Amiel