Perfection Quotes - Page 23

• An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it neither higher nor lower.

  Simone Weil

  Levels, Imagine, Higher

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.99, Psychology Press

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• Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.

  Immanuel Kant

  Men, Animal, Others Happiness

  Immanuel Kant (1986). “Philosophical Writings”, Continuum

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• The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and the sniff. Danger so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.

  John Galsworthy

  Quality, Fundamentals, Firsts

  John Galsworthy (2016). “The Forsyte Saga, Complete: England Literature”, p.9, 谷月社

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• Only gods can safely risk perfection ... it's a dangerous thing for a man.

  Frank Herbert

  Men, Risk, Dangerous

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• Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy.

  Susan Sontag

  Looks, Magazines, Fantasy

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

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• In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art , Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community.

  Susan Sontag

  Spiritual, Art, Community

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

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• Call it the Absolute, the Ideal, Perfection, Sanctity, Decency, or what you will, but strive toward it or you will smother in the morass.

  Austin O'Malley

  Strive, Sanctity, Ideals

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• Perhapsthemost sublimeinsights oftheJewishprophets and the Christian gospel is the knowledge that since perfection is love, the apprehension of perfection is at once the means of seeing one's imperfections and the consoling assurance of grace which makes this realization bearable. This ultimate paradox of high religion is not an invention of theologians or priests. It is constantly validated by the most searching experiences of life.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Christian, Mean, Grace

  1934 Reflections on the End of an Era.

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• It is all very well to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights. There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great and even unlimited enjoyment at the time.

  Ada Leverson

  Children, Pie, Giving

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• Euripides seems to have felt that the dignified perfection of Sophocles could be challenged only by novelty and irresponsibility. The religious conditions of the Dionysian festival kept him within certain bounds. But within the imposed limits Euripides was as profane as he dared to be, making melodrama of the divine realities which his predecessors accepted religiously, using the stage merely as a convenience for popularizing his own eccentric values.

  Laura Riding

  Religious, Reality, Novelty

  "Poetic Drama". "The Common Asphodel". Book by Robert Graves, 1949.

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• I'm not a director that's about precision and control and perfection, I'm about creating an atmosphere that's organic and interesting and then letting people loose, and for that there's no greater actor or performer than children. Animals are maybe a close runner-up.

  David Gordon Green

  Children, Animal, Creating

  Source: collider.com

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• I'm obsessed with perfection. I want to work. I don't want to stop. I want to take advantage and make myself the best possible me that I can be.

  Drake

  Want, Obsessed, Advantage

  "On the Cover: Drake". Interview with Claire Hoffman, www.gq.com. April 13, 2012.

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• You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

  Mike Tyson

  Art, Doe, Stand Your Ground

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• Beauty is the attractive power of perfection.

  Ananda Coomaraswamy

  Beauty, Attractive

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• When the true qualities of photography are recognized, the process of representation by mechanical means will be brought to a level of perfection never before reached.

  Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

  Photography, Mean, Quality

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• Christian holiness is not a matter of painstaking conformity to the individual precepts of an external law code; it is rather a question of the Holy Spirit's producing His fruit in the life, reproducing those graces which were seen in perfection in the life of Christ.

  F. F. Bruce

  Christian, Law, Grace

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• The perfection of the effect demonstrates the perfection of the cause, for a greater power brings about a more perfect effect. But God is the most perfect agent. Therefore, things created by Him obtain perfection from Him. So, to detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of divine power.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Perfect, Agents, Causes

  Saint Thomas (Aquinas) (1955). “On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: God”

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• The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of God.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Men, Mind, Care

  Saint Thomas (Aquinas) (1956). “On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: pts. 1-2. Providence”

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• Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Perfect, Heaven

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.126, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• In the light of absolute values (religious or ethical) man himself is judged to be limited or imperfect, while he can occasionally accomplish acts which partake of perfection, he, himself can never be perfect.

  T. E. Hulme

  Religious, Men, Light

  "Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art". Book by T. E. Hulme, 1924.

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• Locke had illegitimately selected those parts of man he needed for his social contract and suppressed all the rest, a theoretically unsatisfactory procedure and a practically costly one. The bourgeois is the measure of the price paid, he who most of all cannot afford to look to his real self, who denies the existence of the thinly boarded-over basement in him, who is most made over for the purposes of a society that does not even promise him perfection or salvation but merely buys him off.

  Allan Bloom

  Real, Men, Self

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.177, Simon and Schuster

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• All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, The matchless tinting on the royal rose Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, These hold a deeper pathos than our woes, Since they leave nothing better to expect.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Autumn, Clothes, Rose

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2012). “Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.658, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Self-culture has been loudly and boastfully proclaimed as sufficient for all our ideals of perfection. But if we listen to the best men and women everywhere ... they will say that science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

  Helen Keller

  Men, Self, Evil

  Helen Keller (2011). “To Live, to Think, to Hope: Inspirational Quotes by Helen Keller”, p.111, Matthew Gordon

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• The divine injunction to be perfect, even as He is perfect, was not given man to mock him. The possibility of our waking in His likeness is literally true.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Men, Perfect, Waking

  Orison Swett Marden (2016). “The Miracle of Right Thought”, p.18, FV Éditions

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• Possessing the ideal makes a person nervous: you sense the inevitable decline just ahead.

  Garrison Keillor

  Nervous, Decline, Inevitable

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