124 Perfection Quotes

The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.

Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine.

I looked for perfection, and I found something better.

A dewdrop is a perfect integrity that has no filial memory of its parentage.

The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual contradictions... Existence in itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil.

A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it.

I don't believe in perfection. I don't think there is such a thing. But the energy of wanting things to be great is a perfectionist energy.

Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?

I never made a film which fully satisfied me.

Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.

So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.

'I don't like the way my teeth protrude. I'm going to have them done, but I just haven't had the time. Apart from that... I'm perfect.'

The one infinite is perfect, in simplicity, of itself, absolutely, nor can aught be greater or better, This is the one Whole, God, universal Nature, occupying all space, of whom naught but infinity can give the perfect image or semblance.

The Realization of the Nondual traditions is uncompromising: There is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the degenerate - each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit precisely as they are. There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.

Forgive me, giver, if I destroy the gift. It is so nearly what would please me I cannot but perfect it.

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is:the higher achievement.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.

'I don't take gifts from perfect strangers - but then, nobody is perfect.'

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.

Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.

The pursuit of the perfect, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.

The conceptions which any nation or individual entertains of the God of its popular worship may be inferred from their own actions and opinions, which are the subjects of their approbation among their fellow-men. Jesus Christ instructed his disciples to be perfect, as their Father in Heaven is perfect, declaring at the same time his belief that human perfection requires the refraining from revenge and retribution in any of its various shapes.

An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it - neither higher nor lower. [p.240]

Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already.You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity.

...There will be a 'Oops 100.' They'll be plenty more oopses. I'm not perfect. I'm human.

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father

To anyone who is not an artist it must seem rather strange that Degas who could do anything - for whom setting down what he saw presented no difficulties at all - should have continued to draw the same poses year after year - often, it would seem, with increasing difficulty. Just as a classical dancer repeats the same movements again and again, in order to achieve a greater perfection of line and balance, so Degas repeats the same motifs, it was one of the things that gave him so much sympathy with dancers. He was continually struggling to achieve an idea of perfect form, but this did not prevent him looking for the truth in what might seem an artificial situation.

'Presley was very classically orientated with his voice, and diction, and very sincere and wanting to get everything perfect'

When you talk about Fred Astaire, you talk about heaven. What more can I say?

Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. I'm aggrieved when sometimes even excellent Homer nods.

'Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort. We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolutes is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.'

Perfection, cosmically, was nothing but perfect Equanimity and Harmony; and in human relations, nothing but perfect Love and Justice. And Perfection began to glow before the eyes of the Western world like a new star, whose light touched with glamour all things as they came forth from Mystery, till to Mystery they were ready to return. This - I thought is surely what the Western world has dimly been rediscovering. There has crept into our minds once more the feeling that the Universe is all of a piece, Equipoise supreme; and all things equally wonderful, and mysterious, and valuable. We have begun, in fact, to have a glimmering of the artist's creed, that nothing may we despise or neglect - that everything is worth the doing well, the making fair - that our God, Perfection, is implicit everywhere, and the revelation of Him the business of our Art.

The beaute faye upon her face Non erthly thing it may desface.

Perfection or freedom from error comes only from grace.

Tout bonheur est un chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hesitation l'altere, la moindre lourdeur le depare, la moindre sottise l'abetit.

That was all she needed - was for him to tell her he didn't expect her to be the waterseer all the time, that he was marrying the fragile, imperfect human being, and not the overpowering image she inadvertently put on.

This is near enough true bliss.

The current of the world has its boundaries, otherwise it could have no existence, but its purpose is not shown in the boundaries which restrain it, but in its movement, which is toward perfection. The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and sufferings in this world, but that there should be law and order, beauty and joy, goodness and love.

Your mission is proving that a love for the earth, and for the things of the earth, is possible without materialism, a love without greed... I entreat you not to be turned by the call of vulgar strength, of stupendous size, by the spirit of storage, by the multiplication of millions, without meaning and without end. Cherish the ideal of perfection, and to that, relate all your work and all your movements. Though you love the material things of earth, they will not hurt you and you will bring heaven to earth and soul into things.

Every really able man, in whatever direction he work, - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,-if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.

With hindsight, one can perhaps see that unachievable projects were the right monuments to an ideal. Because they were not built, they could not be destroyed.

If women were good, God would have one.

Evolution is the conviction that organisms developed their current forms by an extended history of continual transformation, and that ties of genealogy bind all living things into one nexus. Panselectionism is a denial of history, for perfection covers the tracks of time. A perfect wing may have evolved to its current state, but it may have been created just as we find it. We simply cannot tell if perfection be our only evidence. As Darwin himself understood so well, the primary proofs of evolution are oddities and imperfections that must record pathways of historical descent-the panda's thumb and the flamingo's smile of my book titles (chosen to illustrate this paramount principle of history).

Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through selfless work.

'Cause it can feel like perfection, but never all the time. But you don't wanna be alone again.

Clothe me entire in the final filament, So that I tremble with such love so known And myself am precious for your perfecting.

Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was to leave the 'Aeneid' unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of the 'Georgics,' where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, 'I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.'

I would mould a world of fire and dew With no one bitter, grave, or over wise, And nothing marred or old to do you wrong.

Was never eie did see that face, Was never eare did heare that tong, Was never minde did minde his grace, That ever thought the travell long; But eies and eares and ev'ry thought Were with his sweete perfections caught.

'Clay, you sing like Andre Agassi plays tennis, perfection, perfection. And I would kill to write and produce your first CD.'' - Neil Sedaka, American Idol 2 guest judge -

After all my years in the theater, I can look back on only a handful of moments that met my own standards of perfection. When you transcend yourself and really get inside the character, it's like being touched by God. That happened to me once or twice while I was playing Victoria

I say, life and figure are distinct attributes of one substance, and as one and the same body may be transmuted into all kinds of figures; and as the perfecter figure comprehends that which is more imperfect; so one and the same body may be transmuted from one degree of life to another more perfect, which always comprehends in it the inferior. We have an example of figure in a triangular prism, which is the first figure of all right lined solid triangular prism, which is the first figure of all right lined solid bodies, where into a body is convertible; and from this into a cube, which is a perfecter figure, and comprehends in it a prism; from a cube it may be turned into a more perfect figure, which comes nearer to a globe, and from this into another, which is yet nearer; and so it ascends from one figure, more imperfect to another more perfect, ad infinitum; for here are no bounds; nor can it be said, this body cannot be changed into a perfecter figure: But the meaning is that that body consists of plane right lines; and this is always chageablee into a perfecter figure, and yet can never reach to the perfection of a globe, although it always approaches nearer unto it; the case is the same in diverse degrees of life, which have indeed a beginning, but no end; so that the creature is always capable of a farther and perfecter degree of life, ad infinitum, and yet can never attain to be equal with God; for he is still infinitely more perfect than a creature, in its highest elevation or perfection, even as a globe is the most perfect of all other figures, unto which none can approach.

What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

His only fault is that he has no fault.

'The goal of creation is-to please the creation, i.e. the Creator wants to fill us with the very best. And until a man receives all the very perfect and the very best that has been ordained for him by the Creator, he experiences the lack of everything, and this is the sign that he hasn't yet reached the goal of the creation.'

I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the Union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed.

A poem round and perfect as a star.

If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term 'masterpiece' to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.

Jede menschliche Vollkommenheit ist einem Fehler verwandt, in welchen uberzugehn sie droht.

I rather like bad wine; one gets so bored with good wine.

If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it-purge it, make it perfect-because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile:To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our humanity.

Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much.

You can either look at your career as the things you're going to leave behind, and they have to be executed flawlessly and you have to know exactly what it is that you're doing. Or you can be realistic about the fact that you're going to learn as you practice what you do.

The House Beautiful is, for me, the play lousy.

The perfect man of pagans was the perfection of the man there is; the perfect man of christians, the perfection of the man there isn't; the buddhists' perfect man, the perfection of not existing a man.

We adore perfection because we can't have it; it would disgust us if we had it. Perfect is inhuman, because human is imperfect.

If I had written King Lear, I would regret it all my life afterwards. Because that work is so big, that its defects show as huge, its monstrous defects, things even minimal in between some scenes and their possible perfection. It's not the sun with spots; it's a broken greek statue.

A husband without faults is a dangerous observer.

A plant, an animal, the regular order of nature-probably also the disposition of the whole universe-give manifest evidence that they are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed, no one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence, perfectly harmonizes with the idea of the most perfect of its kind-just as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless he bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions; that, notwithstanding, these ideas are in the highest sense individually, unchangeably, and completely determined, and are the original causes of things; and that the totality of connected objects in the universe is alone fully adequate to that idea. (B 374)

You raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam 'unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

In der Kunst ist das Beste gut genug.

In art the best is good enough.

In beauty faults conspicuous grow; The smallest speck is seen on snow.

I think Polanski is one of the few filmmakers who nearly did a perfect film, a couple of them. Chinatown is almost perfect. It may be perfect. (2004)

When I see people with perfect teeth, it drives me up the wall. I'd rather swallow a tick than have that! (1995)

Liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.

Transparent, weightless, luminous/ Uncovering the two of us/ On that fundamental ground/ Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound/ And half the perfect world is found.'

The very pink of perfection.

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.