Motivational Quotes

Excellence

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

- Carnegie, Andrew

Best Quotes about Excellence

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Do a little bit more than average and from that point on our progress multiplies itself out of all proportion to the effort put in.

Meyer, Paul J.

Put the uncommon effort into the common task... make it large by doing it in a great way.

Marden, Orison Swett

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

Aristotle

It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.

Hemingway, Ernest

With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.

Aristotle

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

O'Connor, Flannery

Do your work; not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishing's sake -- that little more which is worth all the rest.

Briggs, Dean

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

Woolf, Virginia

10.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

Tracy, Brian

11.

To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.

Goldsmith, Oliver

12.

To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.

Beamon, Bob

14.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

Carlyle, Thomas

15.

Our goal, simply stated, is to be the best.

Robinson, James H.

16.

I start where the last man left off.

Edison, Thomas A.

17.

It is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan. It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that makes the master's fame.

Marden, Orison Swett

18.

The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

Gardner, John W.

19.

It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.

Berry, Wendell

20.

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Pearl Buck

21.

The fact is, the difference between peak performers and everybody else are much smaller than everybody else thinks.

Garfield, Charles A.

22.

The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.

Gaberino, Geoffrey

23.

Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened.

Marden, Orison Swett

24.

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Bruyere, Jean De La

25.

One shining quality lends a luster to another, or hides some glaring defect.

Hazlitt, William

26.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

27.

The renown which riches or beauty confer is fleeting and frail; mental excellence is a splendid and lasting possession.

Sallust

28.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Wilde, Oscar

29.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.

Da Vinci, Leonardo

30.

It isn't by size that you win or fail -- be the best of whatever you are.

Malloch, Douglas

31.

Don't waste your time striving for perfection, instead, strive for excellence -- doing your best.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

32.

There is none who cannot teach somebody something, and there is none so excellent but he is excelled.

Gracian, Baltasar

33.

There's a way to do better... find it.

Edison, Thomas A.

34.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Hill, Napoleon

35.

All you owe the public is a good performance.

Bogart, Humphrey

36.

If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.

Roddick, Anita

37.

Determine to become one of the best. Sufficient money will almost automatically follow if you get to be one of the best in your chosen field, whatever it is.

Mitchell, Don G.

38.

Winners have the ability to step back from the canvas of their lives like an artist gaining perspective. They make their lives a work of art -- an individual masterpiece.

Waitley, Denis

39.

Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steer is the way to it.

Hesiod

40.

Resolve to make each day the very best and don't let anyone get in your way. If they do, step on them.

Benson, Ivan

41.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can reach. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries and predecessors; try to be better than yourself.

42.

Anybody who accepts mediocrity -- in school, on the job, in life -- is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises.

Knight, Charles

43.

You're probably not a member of a major league baseball team, your errors, unless they are truly spectacular, don't show up in the morning paper.

Goodsell, Jane

44.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

Gardner, John W.

45.

There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.

Heifetz, Jascha

46.

Excellence is best described as doing the right things right -- selecting the most important things to be done and then accomplishing them 100% correctly.

47.

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

Michener, James A.

48.

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

Watson, Thomas J.

49.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

Hill, Napoleon

50.

People come out to see you perform and you've got to give them the best you have within you. The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.

Owens, Jesse