perfection

1.

Perfectionism is simply putting a limit on your future. When you have an idea of perfect in your mind, you open the door to constantly comparing what you have now with what you want. That type of self criticism is significantly deterring.

- John Eliot, Ph.D.

2.

Christianity alone deprives old age of its bitterness, making it the gate of heaven. Our bodies will fade and grow weak and shapeless, just when we shall not want them, being ready and in close expectation of that resurrection of the flesh which is the great promise of Christianity (no miserable fancies about "pure souls" escaped from matter, but)--of bodies, our bodies, beloved, beautiful, ministers to us in all our joys, sufferers with us in all our sorrows--yea, our very own selves raised up again to live and love in a manner inconceivable from its perfection.

- MS. 1842.

3.

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.

- Saint Francis de Sales

4.

In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to understand others. We must try, live, create, feel, grow and love.

- Bryant McGill

5.

[M]aybe the most any of us can expect of ourselves isn't perfection but progress.

- Michelle Burford

6.

It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man. For it is not by the possession, but the search after truth that he enlarges his power, wherein alone consists his ever-increasing perfection.

- Lessing, Gotthold

7.

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

- Tennyson, Lord Alfred

8.

It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

- Thomas H. Huxley

9.

The idea of perfect closes your mind to new standards.. When you drive hard toward one ideal, you miss opportunities and paths, not to mention hurting your confidence. Believe in your potential and then go out and explore it; donĘt limit it.

- John Eliot, Ph.D.

10.

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

11.

Perhaps the reader may ask, of what consequence is it whether the author's exact language is preserved or not, provided we have his thought? The answer is, that inaccurate quotation is a sin against truth. It may appear in any particular instance to be a trifle, but perfection consists in small things, and perfection is no trifle.

- Robert W. Shaunon

12.

You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

- W. Somerset Maugham

13.

Perfecting is our destiny, but perfection never our lot.

- Weber, C. J.

14.

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good -- that is perfection; and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.

- Ambrose Bierce

15.

Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation.

- La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

16.

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

- W. Somerset Maugham

17.

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

- Dante Alighieri

18.

No one becomes perfect, but some become great.

19.

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

20.

It is no crime not to be perfect