Best perfection & would-be Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many thing by season seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection!”

“They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other.”

Ifs Men May Has Beens Hands Would Be Lost Loses Perfect Behinds Gone Generations Century Limits Gains Perfection Improvement Invention Great Men Reaching Receiving Lag

Author:Eugene Delacroix

“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.”

Giving Feels Doe Made Would Be Mass Perfection Creator Accomplish Immortality Immortal Heritage Short Life Completeness Immortal Life

Book:Beyond the Grave: Being Three Lectures Before Chautauqua Assembly in 1878, with Papers on Recognition in the Future State, and Other Addenda

Source: Beyond the Grave: Being Three Lectures Before Chautauqua Assembly in 1878, with Papers on Recognition in the Future State, and Other Addenda

“Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.”

Long Would Be Perfect Periods Perfection Lifetime Determined Unnatural Long Periods Of Time

Author:W. Somerset Maugham

“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.”

Source: The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944

“If the physical perfection of childhood could last, what a possesssion it would be for humanity!”

Ifs Would Be Lasts Humanity Childhood Perfection

Author:Candace Wheeler

“If I could play any role in any musical, it would be Desiree in A Little Night Music - Oh my, it is perfection. The character gets to be funny, beautiful, sexy and smart all at the same time and have two men fighting over her. The show is Stephen Sondheim at his absolute best... need I say more?”

Ifs Men Needs Littles Two Play Character Shows Would Be Beautiful Night Fighting Roles Smart Perfection Absolutes Musical Sexy If I Could Sondheim

Author:Nancy Allen

“We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.”

Would Be Humanity Steps Perfection Scales

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)

“We can love with all our hearts those in whom we recognize great faults. It would be impertinent to believe that perfection alone has the right to please us; sometimes our weaknesses attach us to each other as much as our virtues.”

Believe Heart Sometimes Would Be Virtue Please Weakness Perfection Faults

Book:La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims

Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims

“Youth would be too happy, might it add to its own beauty and felicity the wisdom and experience of riper years. Were it possible for it to realize the worth of time, as life's receding hours reveal it, how rapidly would it press on towards perfection!”

Years Might Would Be Realizing Hours Youth Perfection Presses Add Felicity Wisdom And Experience

Author:Lydia Sigourney

“We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.”

Littles Ideas Seems Would Be Earth Desire Existence Progress Prove Perfection Train Former Sufficient Expanding Immensity Train Of Thought

Author:Humphry Davy

“I'm an adequatist! I would be happy with something adequate. Perfection's out of the question.”

Would Be Perfection Adequate

Author:Barry Blitt

“That would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly.”

Might Would Be Poor Perfection Oneself Sentences Ridiculous Desert Glorious Sand Seduction Curves Addict Lure Glorious Life

Book:The Waves

Source: The Waves

“It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.”

Would Be Difficult Highest Perfection Accepted Receiving Declaration Proposal

Book:Persuasion In Modern English

Source: Persuasion In Modern English

“I was suddenly struck by how dissimilar we were. It occurred to me that if Grace and I were objects, she would be an elaborate digital clock, synced up with the World Clock in London with technical perfection, and I’d be a snow globe – shaken memories in a glass ball.”

Ifs World Would Be Memories Grace Objects Perfection Balls Glasses London Snow Clock Digital Globes

Book:Shiver Series (Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner)

Source: Shiver Series (Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner)

“An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.”

Source: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections

“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.”

Men Art Would Be Choices Politics Views Cities Liberty Moral Virtue Health Perfection Thrive Elsewhere Elegant Great Cities

Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: 1799-1803

Source: The Works of Thomas Jefferson: 1799-1803

“To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality”

Done Would Be Morality Ideals Perfection Philosophical Oneself Neighbour Utilitarian

Book:Utilitarianism

Source: Utilitarianism

“I do not believe that every person, in every walk of life, can succeed in spite of any handicap. That would be perfection. But I do believe that what I was able to attain came to be because we put behind us (no matter how slowly) the dogmas of the past: to discover the truth of today; and perhaps the greatness of tomorrow.”

Believe Persons Matter Would Be Today Able Past Success Walks Behinds Greatness Tomorrow Succeed Intellectual Perfection Intelligence Spite Dogma Handicaps Walks Of Life

Author:Jackie Robinson

“The essence of peace is to merge two opposites. Therefore your notions should not scare you if you see another, who absolutely opposes you, and you presume that there is no chance for peace between you two. On the same token when you see two individuals who are exactly two opposites, never say it would be impossible for them to reconcile. On the contrary, and this is the perfection of peace to make it between two opposites.”

Ifs Should Two Would Be Individual Peace Chance Impossible Perfection Essence Opposites Notion Contrary Scare Reconcile Tokens Two Opposites

Author:Nachman of Breslov

“To arrive at perfection, a man should have very sincere friends or inveterate enemies; because he would be made sensible of his good or ill conduct, either by the censures of the one or the admonitions of the other.”

Men Should Made Would Be Friendship Enemy Perfection Should Have Ill Sincere Sensible Censure Admonition Sincere Friends

Author:Diogenes

“Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla [Netscape 1.0] is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful. But being a shining jewel of perfection was not a goal when we wrote Mozilla.”

Ifs Needs Bigs Would Be Goal Internet Perfection Shining Useless Programming Crap Jewels Convenient Browsers Mozilla

Author:Jamie Zawinski

“Nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the individual student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see.”

Long Has Beens Self Would Be Able Individual Students Illusion Perfection Communicate Subjective Systematic Pretension Completeness Long Road

Book:The Sociology of Georg Simmel

Source: The Sociology of Georg Simmel

“No one should judge that he has greater perfection because he performs great penances and gives himself in excess to the staying of the body than he who does less, inasmuch as neither virtue nor merit consists therein; for otherwise he would be an evil case, who for some legitimate reason was unable to do actual penance. Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing.”

Giving Should Doe Soul Reason Body Light Would Be Evil Cases Virtue Greater Judging Perfection Merit Staying Excess Discretion Penance Alone In Love

Author:St. Catherine of Siena

“Consciousness makes the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather a limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain.”

Ifs Would Be Form Individual Loss Existence Consciousness Clear Gains Perfection Species Individuality Careful Limitation Preservation

Book:The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)

Source: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)

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Perfection Quotes