Perfection Quotations

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Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.
- Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama, 1855. Part I, section ii.

"Perfect the Will, the Mind, Feeling, their corporeal organs and their material tools; be useful to yourselves, to your own ones, and to others; and Happiness, insofar as it exists on this earth, will come of itself."
- Bolesław Prus, The Most General Life Ideals, 2nd, revised edition, Warsaw, 1905. (Newspaper serialization, 1897–99; 1st book edition, 1901.)

There is but one true good for a spiritual being, and this is found in its perfection. Men are slow to see this truth; and yet it is the key to God's providence, and to the mysteries of life.
- William Ellery Channing, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 449.

It is a union with a Higher Good by love, that alone is endless perfection. The only sufficient object for man must be something that adds to and perfects his nature, to which he must be united in love; somewhat higher than himself, yea, the highest of all, the Father of spirits. That alone completes a spirit and blesses it, — to love Him, the spring of spirits.
- Archbishop Leighton, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 449.

That is the true perfection of man to find out his imperfections.
- Augustine of Hippo, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 449.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one IS sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.
- George Orwell

No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
- William Hazlitt

Do not aim for perfection for if perfection is attained then what other goal is there.
- Anonymous (possibly Chinese philosopher)

Practice makes perfect but no body is perfect, so why practice?
- movie Ang Tanging Ina Ninyong Lahat character Ina Montecillo.

Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.
- English: Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Wind, Sand and Stars

Know that even the greatest of men fail, but hard work and determination will earn one perfection.
- Filipino proverb

The path each man forges through life is his own manifestation of perfection, but simultaneously his own undoing.
- Henry Bennett

On doit exiger de moi que je cherche la vérité, mais non que je la trouve.
- English: One may expect me to search for perfection, but not that I achieve it.
- Denis Diderot

Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen

To stand still on the summit of perfection is difficult, and in the natural course of things, what cannot go forward - slips back.
- Gaius V. Paterculus