Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

- Waitley, Denis

Best Quotes about Excellence

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

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.

Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.

Beamon, Bob

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

Carnegie, Andrew

The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.

Godin, Andre

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

Malloch, Douglas

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

Sir Winston Churchill

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

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.

10.

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

11.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Washington, Booker T.

17.

Do more than you're supposed to do and you can have or be or do anything you want.

Sands, Bill

18.

The uncommon man is merely the common man thinking and dreaming of success in larger terms and in more fruitful areas.

Powers, Melvin

19.

There is no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls.

Trevino, Lee

20.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

21.

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

Robinson, James H.

22.

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

23.

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

Simmons, Charles

24.

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

25.

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

Mandino, Og

26.

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

O'Connor, Flannery

27.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

28.

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

Waitley, Denis

29.

There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands.

Marden, Orison Swett

30.

The road to excellence is always under construction

31.

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

32.

It isn't what you do, but how you do it.

Wooden, John

33.

To do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way; to do some things better than they were ever done before; to eliminate errors; to know both sides of the question; to be courteous; to be an example; to work for the love of work; to anticipate requirements; to develop resources; to recognize no impediments; to master circumstances; to act from reason rather than rule; to be satisfied with nothing short of perfection.

Marshall Field & Company

34.

Good enough never is.

Field, Debbi

35.

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.

36.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

37.

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

Popplestone, Charles E.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

You always have to give 100 percent, because if you don't, someone, someplace, will give 100 percent and will beat you when you meet.

Macauley, Ed

44.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

45.

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

Hurt, William

46.

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

Newton, Howard W.

47.

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

Schwartz, David 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.

I start where the last man left off.

Edison, Thomas A.

50.

There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.

Mill, John Stuart