Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

- Marden, Orison Swett

Best Quotes about Excellence

No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things.

Pollock, Channing

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.

Hill, Napoleon

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

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.

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.

Hurt, William

14.

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

15.

There is no finish line.

Nike Corporation

16.

I start where the last man left off.

Edison, Thomas A.

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

19.

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

20.

The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.

Godin, Andre

21.

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

Gardner, John W.

22.

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.

Sir Winston Churchill

23.

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

Hazlitt, William

24.

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

Malloch, Douglas

25.

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

O'Connor, Flannery

26.

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

27.

People who produce good results feel good about themselves.

Blanchard, Ken

28.

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.

29.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

30.

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

Wilde, Oscar

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.

Washington, Booker T.

35.

I use nothing but the best ingredients. My cookies are always baked fresh. I price cookies so that you cannot make them at home for any less. And I still give cookies away.

Fields, Debbie

36.

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

Mead, Shepherd

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Keats, John

40.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

41.

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.

42.

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

Gracian, Baltasar

43.

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

Heifetz, Jascha

44.

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

Hill, Napoleon

45.

One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempts to the best of one's ability. There is a special sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in its parts, which the superficial person who leaves his or her work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition, can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns any work into art. The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement.

Mandino, Og

46.

Today, and every day, deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable. Exercise your privilege to go the extra mile, and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them!

Mandino, Og

47.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

48.

The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they're expected to do -- they always reach.

Iacocca, Lee

49.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

50.

It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

Publilius Syrus