Perfection Quotes - Page 24

• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Christian, Buddhist, Men

  "The Book of Disquiet". The Book of Disquiet, 1982.

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• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Kings, Regret, Broken

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.250, 1982.

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• Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  God, Character, Perfect

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.270

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• Where is perfection? Where I cannot reach.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Thomas Love Peacock (1944). “Shelley at Oxford”

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• To strive for perfection is to kill love because perfection does not recognize humanity.

  Marion Woodman

  Love Is, Humanity, Doe

  1982 Addition to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride.

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• It is no great advantage to possess a quick wit, if it is not correct; the perfection is not speed but uniformity.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Quick Wit, Speed, Advantage

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• As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.

  Charles Darwin

  Progress, Natural, Origin Of Species

  Charles Darwin (1875). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.428

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• Few have attained to consummate wisdom in the perfection of philosophy: Solomon attained to it, and Aristotle in relation to his times, and in a later age Avicenna, and in our own days the recently deceased Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, and Adam Marsh.

  Roger Bacon

  Philosophy, Age, Bishops

  "Opus Tertium" by Roger Bacon, (p. 70), (c. 1267).

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• As we educate a child -- removing out of its path those obstacles over which we ourselves, in early days, have stumbled, and strengthening its mind with the aid of our own matured experience -- we, as it were, construct a new and better replica of ourselves, and thus enable the race to move slowly, but surely, forward towards the ultimate goal of existence -- towards perfection.

  Leonid Andreyev

  Children, Moving, Race

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• What I'm doing right now, I'm chasing perfection... and if I don't get it, I'm going to get this close.

  Kobe Bryant

  Chasing, Right Now, Ifs

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• When wisdom reaches the acme of perfection, it will suppress the vicious instincts and injurious desires.

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Desire, Instinct, Vicious

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• It seemed to me that I now saw the Star Maker in two aspects: as the spirit's particular creative mood that had given rise to me, the cosmos; and also, most dreadfully, as something incomparably greater than creativity, namely as the eternally achieved perfection of the absolute spirit. Barren, barren and trivial are these words. But not barren the experience.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Stars, Creativity, Two

  "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon, Dover Books, (p. 161), 1937.

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• The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect.

  George Sarton

  Vanity, Creative, Greek

  George Sarton (1952). “Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• The celebrated Adam Smith was the first to point out the immense increase of production, and the superior perfection of products referable to this division of labour.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Division, Firsts, Increase

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.91

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• 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.

  Robert B. Leighton

  Father, Spring, Men

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• I do not like the Broadway theatre because it does not know how to say hello. The tone of voice is false, the mannerisms are false, the sex is false, ideal, the Hollywood world of perfection, the clean image, the well pressed clothes, the well scrubbed anus, odorless, inhuman, of the Hollywood actor, the Broadway star. And the terrible false dirt of Broadway, the lower depths in which the dirt is imitated, inaccurate.

  Julian Beck

  Sex, Stars, Broadway Theatre

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• The ideal is to be obtained by selecting and assembling in one whole the beauties and perfections which are usually seen in different individuals, excluding everything defective or unseemly, so as to form a type or model of the species.

  William Fleming

  Different, Sculpture, Individual

  William Fleming, Charles Porterfield Krauth (1860). “The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral and Metaphysical: With Quotations and References; for the Use of Students”, p.230

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• Natural Magick is taken to be nothing else, but the chief power of all the natural Sciences; which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy, and which is indeed the active part of the same; which by the assistance of natural forces and faculties, through their mutual & opportune application, performs those things that are above Human Reason.

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

  Philosophy, Taken, Reason

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1676). “The Vanity of Arts and Sciences”, p.110

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• When I kicked in the first TV – a nineteen-inch Magnavox with wicker speaker panels – it felt like the most perfect thing I had done in a long time. And there's nothing like the feeling of perfection that will inspire repeated behavior.

  Adam Rapp

  Long, Inspire, Feelings

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• Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Inspiration, Successful, Diversity

  Rudolf Rocker (2004). “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice”, p.17, AK Press

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• I feel that I was made to complete things. To accomplish only a mass of beginnings and attempts would be to make a total failure of life. Perfection is the heritage with which my Creator has endowed me, and since this short life does not give completeness, I must have immortal life in which to find it.

  Randolph Sinks Foster

  Short Life, Giving, Doe

  Randolph Sinks Foster (1870). “Beyond the Grave: Being Three Lectures Before Chautauqua Assembly in 1878, with Papers on Recognition in the Future State, and Other Addenda”, p.92

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• It is the profoundest of cosmic ironies. The divine power, our true spiritual essence, does not achieve perfection until it hits the 'rock' bottom of the cosmos - the dense and crude earth. It remains imperfect until the moment of entombment for the simple reason that until that dark nadir is reached the experiential adventure of existence remains incomplete, and Self is not yet endowed with the entire spectrum of the light of consciousness - from spirit to matter - from the highest high to the lowest low.

  Lon Milo DuQuette

  Spiritual, Adventure, Dark

  Jason Augustus Newcomb, Lon Milo Duquette (2004). “The New Hermetics: 21st Century Magick for Illumination and Power”, p.14, Weiser Books

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• The Ancients, having taken into consideration the rigorous construction of the human body, elaborated all their works, as especially their holy temples, according to these proportions; for they found here the two principal figures without which no project is possible: the perfection of the circle, the principle of all regular bodies, and the equilateral square.

  Luca Pacioli

  Taken, Squares, Circles

  "De divina proportione". Book by Luca Pacioli, June 1, 1509.

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• If you want excellence, you must aim at perfection. It makes you go into detail that you can avoid. It takes a lot of energy out of you but that's the only way you finally actually achieve excellence. So in that sense, being finicky is essential.

  J. R. D. Tata

  Excellence, Essentials, Want

  "JRD Tata — A retrospective". tata.com. July 29, 2004.

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• The renunciation of doing harm is the perfection of discipline

  Shantideva

  Discipline, Harm, Renunciation

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