Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

- Sallust

Best Quotes about Excellence

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

Carnegie, Andrew

Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hall-mark of excellence.

Marden, Orison Swett

The road to excellence is always under construction

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

Peters, Thomas J.

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

If something is exceptionally well done it has embedded in it's very existence the aim of lifting the common denominator rather than catering to it.

Fischer, Edward

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

10.

Become all that you are capable of becoming!

Mckain, Robert J.

11.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

12.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

13.

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

14.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Gardner, John W.

15.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

16.

You must be resolutely determined that whatever you do shall always be the best of which you are capable.

Popplestone, Charles E.

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

Keats, John

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Washington, Booker T.

22.

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

Heifetz, Jascha

23.

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

Robinson, James H.

24.

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Marden, Orison Swett

25.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

26.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

27.

Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.

Thomas, Lowell

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Malloch, Douglas

34.

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

35.

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

Hazlitt, William

36.

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

37.

The success combination in business is: Do what you do better... and: Do more of what you do...

Schwartz, David J.

38.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

39.

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

40.

There seems to be one quality of mind which seems to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed.

Darwin, Francis

41.

The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.

John F. Kennedy

42.

People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it.

Newton, Howard W.

43.

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

Aristotle

44.

The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval.

Waitley, Denis

45.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

46.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.

Rorty, Richard

47.

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.

Riley, Pat

48.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

49.

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.

Mandino, Og

50.

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