Quest For Perfection Quotes

Truly, from a very early age, I started distancing myself from other kids, not out of willingness, but just out of the nature of my energy. I liked to do things solely, and I already had a taste of the quest for perfection, which is unusual in a little kid. ~ Philippe Petit

I keep saying I am an auto-didact, but I have a lot of outside influences. One I could cite is juggler Francis Brunn, who was the first man to throw ten rings in the air; he was really an amazing juggler who showed onstage the quest for perfection. ~ Philippe Petit

shame is the voice of perfectionism. Whether we're talking about appearance, work, motherhood, health or family, it's not the quest for perfection that is so painful; it's failing to meet the unattainable expectations that lead to the painful wash of shame. ~ Brene Brown

The quest for perfection lead down the dangerous path of procrastination. ~ Salma Farook

I can't stand satisfaction. To me, greatness comes from that quest for perfection. ~ Mike Schmidt

Going overboard on a quest for perfection leads to life suckage and backsliding. ~ James S. Fell

Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say - no detail spared in the quest for perfection. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

high standards from long ago are part of the infinite now.. as a quest for perfection; along with the awareness that perfection is infinite with no final destination..... ~ Leland Lewis

From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.' ~ Naomi Wolf

In japanese culture, there's a belief that only imperfect objects, like a cracked teacup, can truly be beautiful. This is called wabi sabi.

Try to let go of the quest for perfection, and instead accept the beauty that lies in all of life's imperfections. The result will be extra energy, less stress and a longer life. ~ Blinkist

Hinduism's basic tenet is that many roads exist by which men have pursued and still pursue their quest for the truth and that none has universal validity. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette

Now, I believe the best way for you to learn is immersion and since we can't teleport you all to France," he grinned at me, and there were once again sighs from the girls. "I'll be speaking only in French and will expect you to do the same. Is anyone here already proficient in the language?" I narrowed my eyes at him. He knew darn well I was fluent in French and several other languages. "Eveline, I believe your dad mentioned at dinner the other night that you are?"

What was he doing? "Umm. Yes-"

He shook his head at me. "En français s'il vous plait." More sighs from the class. I clenched my jaw and spoke rapidly. "Oui, Monsieur Smith. Je parle français. Qu'est-ce que tu veux?" Yes, Mr.Smith. I speak French. What do you want?

His eyes smoldered and caressed my face as he delivered his swift reply, "Je veux plus de toi que vous imaginez, ma petit lueur. ~ Heather Self

The quest for simplicity has to pervade every part of the process. It really is fundamental. ~ Jonathan Ive

Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found. ~ Deepak Chopra

I am just a guy, doing my best to be the best person I can be.
And, every once in a while, I fuck up the moment I'm in.
Please. Get over it. Get over yourselves. Get over this weird need to be morally superior to me and to the other people in this world.
And let me be imperfect. I assure you, my imperfections drive me to improve.
Let me love myself. I assure you, loving myself despite my faults will only make me a better person.
Let me be my own judge. I assure you, I'll be more fair and just than you ever will.
Let me be the owner of my own intentions. I assure you, there isn't another soul on earth who knows what my real intentions are but me.
Love and acceptance despite ongoing and glaring imperfection is all I've ever tried to attain with this blog. For me. For you. For everyone. And I'll never stop. ~ Dan Pearce

You mustn't force images on things.
Only gods were what you should expect perfection from.
You mustn't demand an ideal from anyone.
That is weakness. It is an evil that must be hated. It is negligence that must be punished. It spoils not only yourself, but those around you.
You are allowed to be disappointed with only yourself. You should hurt only yourself. Hate yourself for not following your ideal.
The only one you must not forgive is yourself. ~ Wataru Watari

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection. ~ Plato

Collecting at its best is very far from mere acquisitiveness; it may become one of the most humanistic of occupations, seeking to illustrate by the assembling of significant reliques, the march of the human spirit in its quest for beauty ... ~ Arthur Davison Ficke

We are imperfect creatures created with egotistical defects, insecurities and an incomprehensible desire for perfection and the excessive use of social media feeds the raging fires within, most of the time adding salt to wounds we never knew existed and at times creating new ones. ~ Aysha Taryam

The road to the kingdom of childhood, governed by ingenuousness and innocence, is thus regained in the horror of atonement. The purity of love is regained in its intimate truth which, as I said, is that of death. Death and the instant of divine intoxication merge when they both oppose those intentions of Good which are based on rational calculation. And death indicates the instant which, in so far as it is instantaneous, renounces the calculated quest for survival. The instant of the new individual being depended on the death of other beings. Had they not died there would have been no room for new ones. Reproduction and death condition the immortal renewal of life; they condition the instant which is always new. That is why we can only have a tragic view of the enchantment of life, but that is also why tragedy is the symbol of enchantment. ~ Georges Bataille

The camp offices stood in the centre, adjoining the shrine to Jupiter that held the legion's Eagle. In the camps of the Vth Macedonica and the VIth Ferrata, these buildings were of grey stone, dressed by Gaulish masons to such smoothness that a man could run his hand down them and not feel the joins.
The legions' respective signs of the bull and the eagle had been carved thereon with such pride and perfection that men copied them on their shields and carved them on the bedheads in the barracks.
At Raphana, the camp office of the XIIth Fulminata and IVth Scythians before which we dismounted was built of the local baked mud, and some drunkard with a poor eye for detail had etched
the Scythians' sign of the goat and the Fulminata's crossed thunderbolts together, so that it seemed as if the goat were thunderstruck, or else that lightning grew from its anus. Both applied equally; each was unthinkable in a legion which had any pride in itself. ~ M.C. Scott

He (Knox) handles the doctrines of election and justification as causes for bright joy in believers. 'Your imperfections shall have no power to damn you,' he writes to Mrs. Bowes, 'for Christ's perfection is reputed to be yours by faith, which you have in his blood.' 'God has received already at the hands of His only Son all that is due for our sins, and so cannot his justice require or crave any more of us, other satisfaction or recompense for our sins. ~ Iain Murray

Perfection is too high a goal to strive for. Sometimes working hard brings
more satisfaction in the end. ~ Megan Hart

I look for good possibilities in movies. I don't look for perfection. ~ Christopher Walken

Amazing that, amidst such beauty, He would decide to even look at me, let alone call me to join Him in a quest for shalom. This journey will not fail. It cannot fail when He is the leader. ~ Nadine Brandes

Stanley must have realized that this postponement would probably be fatal. But while he did not give up, he never for a moment thought of abandoning his African quest [...] Yet Stanley still longed for the security of marriage, and hoped he could find Livingstone and marry Katie. [...] The romantic side of his nature told him that their story ought to end in marriage: the workhouse boy, having distinguished himself beyond all expectations, weds the daughter of the respectable local gentleman, and they live happily ever afterwards in a big house
[...] But Katie had never understood his inner conviction of being chosen for a great task. ~ Tim Jeal

If the search for happiness is the underlying quest of our lives, it seems only natural that it should simultaneously be the essential theme to which beauty alludes. ~ Alain De Botton

I've been surprised by how many of you actually seem to believe that what you have is perfection. [ ... ] A great many of you consciously or unconsciously think of evolution as a process of inexorable improvement. You imagine that humans began as a completely miserable lot but under the influence of evolution very gradually got better and better and better and better until one day the became what you are now, complete with frost-free refrigerators, microwave ovens, air-conditioning, minivans, and satellite telivision with six hundred channels. [ ... ] In its root sense, 'wealth' isn't a synonym for 'money', it's a synonym for 'wellness'. ~ Daniel Quinn

Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, "Done is better than perfect." I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Regardless of who leads it, the professional-class liberalism I have been describing in these pages seems to be forever traveling on a quest for some place of greater righteousness. It is always engaged in a search for some subject of overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness with which it can identify itself and under whose umbrella of virtue it can put across its self-interested class program.

There have been many other virtue-objects over the years: people and ideas whose surplus goodness could be extracted for deployment elsewhere. The great virtue-rush of the 1990s, for example, was focused on children, then thought to be the last word in overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness. Who could be against kids? No one, of course, and so the race was on to justify whatever your program happened to be in their name. In the course of Hillary Clinton's 1996 book, It Takes a Village, the favorite rationale of the day - think of the children! - was deployed to explain her husband's crime bill as well as more directly child-related causes like charter schools.

You can find dozens of examples of this kind of liberal-class virtue-quest if you try, but instead of listing them, let me go straight to the point: This is not politics. It's an imitation of politics. It feels political, yes: it's highly moralistic, it sets up an easy melodrama of good versus bad, it allows you to make all kinds of judgments about people you disagree with, but ultimately it's a diversion, a ~ Thomas Frank

The ten commandments according to Leó Szilárd

1. Recognize the connections of things and laws of conduct of men, so that you may know what you are doing.

2. Let your acts be directed toward a worthy goal, but do not ask if they will reach it; they are to be models and examples, not means to an end.

3. Speak to all men as you do to yourself, with no concern for the effect you make, so that you do not shut them out from your world; lest in isolation the meaning of life slips out of sight and you lose the belief in the perfection of creation.

4. Do not destroy what you cannot create.

5. Touch no dish, except that you are hungry.

6. Do not covet what you cannot have.

7. Do not lie without need.

8. Honor children. Listen reverently to their words and speak to them with infinite love.

9.Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.

10. Lead your life with a gentle hand and be ready to leave whenever you are called.

Leo Szilard 'Die Stimme der Delphine.' Utopische Erzählungen. Rowohit Taschenbuch Verlag. 1963. Translated by Dr. Jacob Bronowski. ~ Leo Szilard

The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes critics decry spirituality as individualism, but they miss the point. Spirituality is personal, yes. To experience God's spirit, to be lost in wonder, is something profound that we can all know directly and inwardly. That is not a problem. The real problem is that, in the last two centuries, religion has actually allowed itself to become privatized. In the same way that our political and economic concerns contracted from "we" to "me," so has our sense of God and faith. In many quarters, religion abandoned a prophetic and creative vision for humanity's common life in favor of an individual quest to get one's sorry ass to heaven. And, in the process, community became isolated behind the walls of buildings where worship experiences corresponded to members' tastes and preferences and confirmed their political views. ~ Diana Butler Bass

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth. ~ Emile M. Cioran

DAISIES

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their -- if you don't
mind my saying so -- their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example -- I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch --
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field. ~ Mary Oliver

It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of his victim to become a real test for him; since he had quite put it to himself from the first that, oh distinctly! he could "cultivate" his whole perception. He had felt it as above all open to cultivation
which indeed was but another name for his manner of spending his time. He was bringing it on, bringing it to perfection, by practice; in consequence of which it had grown so fine that he was now aware of impressions, attestations of his general postulate, that couldn't have broken upon him at once. ~ Henry James

Life in the Church means experiencing leaders who are not always wise, mature, and deft. In fact, some of us are as bumpy and uneven as a sackful of old doorknobs. Some of the polishing we experience is a result of grinding against each other. How vital submissiveness is in such circumstances, especially if the lubrication of love is not amply present.
In a church established, among other reasons, for the perfecting of the Saints
an ongoing process
it is naive to expect, and certainly unfair to demand, perfection in our peers. A brief self-inventory is wise before we "cast the first stone." Possessing a few rocks in our own heads, it is especially dangerous to have rocks too ready in our hands. ~ Neil A. Maxwell

There is no better news than that the God who makes the demand for perfection also meets the demand for perfection on our behalf. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

Perfection is a fallacy. Embrace the things you cannot change and fight for those you can. ~ Danielle Bourdon

That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be. ~ Harold S. Kushner

'Now we are the sons of God'. This is the starting point of adoption. However, 'it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is' (I Jn. 3:2). This is the perfection of adoption of sons and renewal which God bestowed on us in Christ, and of which John says in his Gospel that, 'Christ gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God' (Jn. 1:12-13). ~ Gregory Palamas