Perfection

Perfection is, broadly, a state of completeness and flawlessness.

Sourced

• 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.

• 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.

• Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
  • William Hazlitt, "Thoughts on Taste", The Edinburgh Magazine, July 1819, final paragraph.

• Le plus grand ennemi du bon, c'est le mieux.
  • The better is the greatest enemy of the good.
  • French proverb, as cited in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820), §216.
  • Variants:
    • Dans ses écrits un sage Italien
      Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
      • In his writings a wise Italian
        Says that the better is the enemy of the good.
      • Voltaire, La Bégueule (The Prude) (1772)
    • The perfect is the enemy of the good.
      • Modern paraphrase of Voltaire.

• 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 Leighton, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 449.

• "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).

• 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.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 593.

• Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
  • Michael Angelo; compare Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

• What's come to perfection perishes,
  Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
  Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.
  • Robert Browning, Old Pictures in Florence, Stanza 17.

• The very pink of perfection.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, Act I, scene 1.

• Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
  Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), Part II, line 53.

• Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn'd to serve
  Humbly call'd mistress.
  • William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act V, scene 3, line 16.

• How many things by season season'd are
  To their right praise and true perfection!
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act V, scene 1, line 107.

• It is the witness still of excellency
  To put a strange face on his own perfection.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act II, scene 3, line 48.

• A man cannot have an idea of perfection in another, which he was never sensible of in himself.
  • Richard Steele, The Tatler, No. 227.

• In this broad earth of ours,
  Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
  Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
  Nestles the seed perfection.
  • Walt Whitman, Song of the Universal.

Unsourced

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

• 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

• Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.
  • Salvador Dalí

• On doit exiger de moi que je cherche la vérité, mais non que je la trouve.
  • English: One must demand of me that I search the truth, but not that I achieve it.
  • Denis Diderot

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

• Perfect only in her imperfection
  • Jon Mclauglin

• 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

• 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

• 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 cut away.
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Wind, Sand and Stars