Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

- Scott, Sir Walter

Best Quotes about Excellence

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

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.

Rorty, Richard

The road to excellence is always under construction

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

The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.

Godin, Andre

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

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

Heifetz, Jascha

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

Simmons, Charles

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

10.

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

11.

Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

Ogilvy, David

12.

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

13.

You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.

Garcia, Jerry

14.

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

Wilde, Oscar

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Mandino, Og

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.

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

Thomas, Lowell

20.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

21.

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

Washington, Booker T.

22.

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

24.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

25.

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

O'Connor, Flannery

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Carnegie, Andrew

31.

If I play my best, I can win anywhere in the world against anybody.

Floyd, Ray

32.

There is a canyon of difference between doing your best to glorify God and doing whatever it takes to glorify yourself. The quest for excellence is a mark of maturity. The quest for power is childish.

Lucado, Max L.

33.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

34.

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

Berry, Wendell

35.

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

36.

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

Malloch, Douglas

37.

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

38.

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

Waitley, Denis

39.

There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority...

Marden, Orison Swett

40.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

41.

Good enough never is.

Field, Debbi

42.

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

43.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

44.

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

Young, Steve

45.

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

Mead, Shepherd

46.

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

47.

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

Robinson, James H.

48.

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

49.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

50.

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