Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

- Hazlitt, William

Best Quotes about Excellence

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

Young, Steve

It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.

Marden, Orison Swett

A racehorse that consistently runs just a second faster than another horse is worth millions of dollars more. Be willing to give that extra effort that separates the winner from the one in second place.

Brown Jr., H. Jackson

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Marden, Orison Swett

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.

Keats, John

I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.

Sanders, Col. Harland

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.

There never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to resolute self-denial.

Scott, Sir Walter

10.

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

Sallust

11.

Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.

Beamon, Bob

12.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

13.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

14.

It is only in your mind that you have to excel, at anything or everything. Of course, it would be very nice to excel at most things. Indeed, we recommend that you try and do your best. But realistically, you are entitled to do the bare minimum to get by. All your accomplishments are just a bonus, something to enjoy, not requirements. You don't have to do anything to prove that you are worthy of existing.

Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi

15.

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.

Feinstein, Dianne

16.

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

Simmons, Charles

17.

Excellent firms don't believe in excellence -- only in constant improvement and constant change.

Peters, Thomas J.

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

Lincoln, Abraham

21.

The road to excellence is always under construction

22.

Let each day be your masterpiece.

23.

Superiority -- doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.

Marden, Orison Swett

24.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

25.

I can do small things in a great way.

Clarke, James Freeman

26.

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

Heifetz, Jascha

27.

If we want to make something really superb on this planet, there is nothing whatever that can stop us.

Mead, Shepherd

28.

Great men are little men expanded; great lives are ordinary lives intensified.

Peterson, Wilferd A.

29.

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

30.

Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

Kingsley, Charles

31.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

32.

Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more.

Vickery, A. Lou

33.

One of the most essential things you need to do for yourself is to choose a goal that is important to you. Perfection does not exist -- you can always do better and you can always grow.

Brown, Les

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

38.

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Marden, Orison Swett

39.

I start where the last man left off.

Edison, Thomas A.

40.

The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.

Getty, J. Paul

41.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

42.

We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.

Joubert, Joseph

43.

Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark...

Marden, Orison Swett

44.

I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest. I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have.

Truman, Harry S

45.

If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.

Watson, Thomas J.

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.

Lombardi, Vince

49.

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

50.

It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.

Aristotle