Great Throughts Treasury

"The noble person tries to create harmony in the human heart by a rediscovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music prevails and the people’s minds are led toward the right ideas and aspirations, we may see the appearance of a great nation. Character is the backbone of our human nature, and music is the flowing of character... The poem gives expression to our heart, the song gives expression to our voice, and the dance gives expression to our movements. these three arts take their rise from the human soul, and then are given further expressions by means of musical instruments." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"The principle of higher learning [higher education] consists in preserving man’s clear character, in giving new life to the people, and in dwelling in perfection, or the ultimate good." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"To reach perfection, we must all pass one by one, through the death of self-effacement." - Dag Hammarskjöld

"Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person." - David M. Burns

"Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life." - David M. Burns

"Man is here to experience the unity of his own consciousness, to rise from suffering to perfection, and in the triumph of enlightenment to reclaim the earth as a heaven designed from him. Beneath the mask of suffering, the meaning of life is limitless freedom and the conquest of death." - Deepak Chopra

"Truth is the foundation and the reason of the perfection of beauty, for of whatever stature a thing may be, it cannot be beautiful and perfect, unless it be truly what it should be, and possess truly all that it should have." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Society is indeed a contract... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born." - Edmund Burke

"Never expect to find perfection in men, in my commerce with my contemporaries I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They who raise suspicions on the good, on account of the behavior of ill men, are of the party of the latter." - Edmund Burke

"I was greatly influenced by one of my teachers. She had a zeal not so much for perfection as for steady betterment - she demanded not excellence so much as integrity." - Edward R. Murrow, born Egbert Roscoe Murrow

"I believe in the challenging mind, in the unreconciled heart and in the will toward perfection." - Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these; for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL

"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." - Eugène Delacroix, fully Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix

"To choose time is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air. There be three parts of business - the preparation, the debate or examination, and the perfection; whereof, if you look for despatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of few." - Francis Bacon

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection." - George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair

"If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty." - George Santayana

"In the heat of speculation or of love there may come moments of equal perfection, but they are very unstable. The reason and the heart remain deeply unsatisfied. But the eye finds in nature, and in some supreme achievements of art, constant and fuller satisfaction. For the eye is quick and seems to have been more docile to the education of life than the heart or the reason of man, and able sooner to adapt itself to the reality. Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility." - George Santayana

"Strive for excellence, not perfection." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Now the perfect accordance of the will to the moral law is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of sensible world is capable at any moment of his existence." - Immanuel Kant

"Want is a bitter and hateful good, because its virtues are not understood; yet many things, impossible to thought, have been by need to full perfection brought; the daring of the soul proceeds from thence, sharpness of wit and active diligence; prudence at once, and fortitude it gives; and, if in patience taken, mends our lives." - John Dryden

"The end... of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection." - John Milton

"If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work." - John Ruskin

"Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their restraint." - John Ruskin

"Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion." - Joseph Addison

"Honor's a sacred tie, the noble mind's distinguish perfection, that aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her, and imitates her actions where she is not." - Joseph Addison

"With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it." - Joseph Addison

"The soul, considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity without a possibility of touching it; and can there be a thought so transporting as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?" - Joseph Addison

"There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life." - Joseph Addison

"Myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your perfection, the fullness of your strength, and the bringing of solar light into the world." - Joseph Campbell

"Perfection is not for the pure of soul; there may be virtue in sin." - Kahlil Gibran

"A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life... Variation, experiment and insurgence are all of them attributes of freedom." - Lewis Mumford

"Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Even if the Universe existed for man’s sake and man existed for the purpose of serving God, one must still ask: What is the end of serving God? He does not become more perfect if all His creatures serve Him. Nor would he lose anything if nothing existed beside Him. It might perhaps be replied that the service of God is not intended for God’s perfection, but for our own. Then, however, the question arises: What is the object of our being perfect? Pressing the inquiry as to the purpose of Creation, we must at last arrive at the answer: it was the will of God. Logic as well as tradition prove clearly that the Universe does not exist for man’s sake, but that all things in it exist each for its own sake." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"The service of God is not intended for God’s perfection; it is intended for our perfection." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"Life’s meaning rests in the eye of the beholder and in our constant desire to approach perfection. Life is so immense and complex that there is no one truth, only the rule of destiny... We do not choose life; life chooses us. Yet we try to follow our destiny, our passion our drive. We must live every minute as if it is our first and our last... The meaning of life lies in our desire to help others... Earthly life is an eternal miracle. In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand." - Marcel Marceau, born Marcel Mangel

"The soul must not boast that it is more holy than the body, for only in that it has climbed down into the body and works through its limbs can the soul attain to its perfection. The body on the other hand, may not brag of supporting the soul, for when the soul leaves, the flesh falls into decay." - Martin Buber

"The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine." - Martin Buber

"We demand of our political life greater certainty and greater perfection than we demand of our personal life." - Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner

"There is nothing to test the perfection of love better than trust. Wholehearted love for another person carries confidence with it. Whatever one dares to trust God for, he really finds in God and a thousand times more." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

"To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species. The essence of man is imperfection. Imperfection and blazing contradictions - between mixed good and evil, altruism and selfishness, co-operativeness and combativeness, optimism and fatalism, affirmation and negation." - Norman Cousins

"If the world has indeed been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

"The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

"The urge to do and be that which is the noblest, the most beautiful of which we are capable, is the creative impulse of every high achievement. We strive for perfection here because we long to be restored to our oneness with God." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"We should approach our nearest Problem or duty with concentrated energy and execute it to perfection. This should be our philosophy of life." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"The belief in immortality depends finally upon the belief in God. If there exists a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of mankind toward perfection; and if there be no progress of men towards perfection, then there cannot be a good and wise God. We cannot suppose that God’s moral government, the beginnings of which we see in the world and in ourselves, will cease when we leave this life." - Plato NULL

"Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

"Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character." - Ralph Barton Perry

"A man can do his best only by confidently seeking (and perpetually missing) unattainable perfection." - Ralph Barton Perry

"The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit." - Ralph Waldo Emerson