In a world that constantly strives for flawlessness, the quest for perfection can be both inspiring and daunting. Whether we're seeking excellence in our personal lives, professional endeavors, or creative pursuits, the notion of perfection often serves as a guiding light, urging us to push boundaries and redefine limits. Yet, it's also important to recognize the beauty in imperfection and the journey itself. Our curated collection of 145 inspiring quotes on perfection captures this duality, offering wisdom from thinkers, artists, and leaders who have pondered the nature of perfection in all its forms. Dive into this exploration and let these quotes inspire you to embrace both the pursuit of perfection and the grace of imperfection.
1. “There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.” - Michael Cunningham
2. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3. “I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.” - Edgar Allan Poe
4. “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.” - Michael J. Fox
5. “...you don't have to be perfect to be pretty” - Carson Kressley
6. “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
7. “When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good.” - Thomas Paine
8. “L'union libre [Freedom of Love]" My wife with the hair of a wood fireWith the thoughts of heat lightningWith the waist of an hourglassWith the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tigerMy wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitudeWith the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earthWith the tongue of rubbed amber and glassMy wife with the tongue of a stabbed hostWith the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyesWith the tongue of an unbelievable stoneMy wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writingWith brows of the edge of a swallow's nestMy wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roofAnd of steam on the panesMy wife with shoulders of champagneAnd of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the iceMy wife with wrists of matchesMy wife with fingers of luck and ace of heartsWith fingers of mown hayMy wife with armpits of marten and of beechnutAnd of Midsummer NightOf privet and of an angelfish nestWith arms of seafoam and of riverlocksAnd of a mingling of the wheat and the millMy wife with legs of flaresWith the movements of clockwork and despairMy wife with calves of eldertree pithMy wife with feet of initialsWith feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinkingMy wife with a neck of unpearled barleyMy wife with a throat of the valley of goldOf a tryst in the very bed of the torrentWith breasts of nightMy wife with breasts of a marine molehillMy wife with breasts of the ruby's crucibleWith breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dewMy wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of daysWith the belly of a gigantic clawMy wife with the back of a bird fleeing verticallyWith a back of quicksilverWith a back of lightWith a nape of rolled stone and wet chalkAnd of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinkingMy wife with hips of a skiffWith hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathersAnd of shafts of white peacock plumesOf an insensible pendulumMy wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestosMy wife with buttocks of swans' backsMy wife with buttocks of springWith the sex of an irisMy wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypusMy wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeatMy wife with a sex of mirrorMy wife with eyes full of tearsWith eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needleMy wife with savanna eyesMy wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prisonMy wife with eyes of wood always under the axeMy wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire” - André Breton
9. “When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.” - Charles Baxter
10. “Don't mistake activity with achievement.” - John Wooden
11. “One minute was enough, Tyler said, "A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.” - Chuck Palahniuk
12. “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” - Immanuel Kant
13. “If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.” - Leo Tolstoy
14. “Katy was neither a Methodist nor a Masochist. She was a goddess and the silence of goddesses is genuinely golden. None of your superficial plating. A solid, twenty-two-carat silence all the way through. The Olympian's trap is kept shut, not by an act of willed discretion, but because there's really nothing to say. Goddesses are all of one piece. There's no internal conflict in them. Whereas the lives of people like you and me are one long argument. Desires on one side, woodpeckers on the other. Never a moment of real silence.” - Aldous Huxley
15. “I'm living a dream I never want to wake up from.” - Cristiano Ronaldo
16. “Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing - with wave lengths, just as sound and light have.” - Richard Connell
17. “We two make banquets of the plainest fareIn every cup we find the thrill of pleasure... For us life always moves with lilting measureWe two, we two, we make our world, our pleasure” - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
18. “People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.” - colum mccann
19. “It took a lot of work to be perfect. If you didn’t want to break a sweat, there was no point in even bothering.” - Sarah Dessen
20. “[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.” - Lev Grossman
21. “... one flaw throws the loveliness of [everything else] into focus. I remember reading that Shakers deliberately introduced a mistake into the things they made, to show that man shouldn't aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.” - Gretchen Rubin
22. “The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS.” - Winston S. Churchill
23. “Perfectly ImperfectWe have all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake takes the perfect form for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for its journey. And while the universal force of gravity gives them a shared destination, the expansive space in the air gives each snowflake the opportunity to take their own path. They are on the same journey, but each takes a different path.Along this gravity-driven journey, some snowflakes collide and damage each other, some collide and join together, some are influenced by wind... there are so many transitions and changes that take place along the journey of the snowflake. But, no matter what the transition, the snowflake always finds itself perfectly shaped for its journey. I find parallels in nature to be a beautiful reflection of grand orchestration. One of these parallels is of snowflakes and us. We, too, are all headed in the same direction. We are being driven by a universal force to the same destination. We are all individuals taking different journeys and along our journey, we sometimes bump into each other, we cross paths, we become altered... we take different physical forms. But at all times we too are 100% perfectly imperfect. At every given moment we are absolutely perfect for what is required for our journey. I’m not perfect for your journey and you’re not perfect for my journey, but I’m perfect for my journey and you’re perfect for your journey. We’re heading to the same place, we’re taking different routes, but we’re both exactly perfect the way we are. Think of what understanding this great orchestration could mean for relationships. Imagine interacting with others knowing that they too each share this parallel with the snowflake. Like you, they are headed to the same place and no matter what they may appear like to you, they have taken the perfect form for their journey. How strong our relationships would be if we could see and respect that we are all perfectly imperfect for our journey.” - Steve Maraboli
24. “Perfection is not a destination; it's a never-ending process...Enjoy!” - Jim Bouchard
25. “There must be something wrong with those people who think Audrey Hepburn doesn’t perspire, hiccup or sneeze, because they know that’s not true. I n fact, I hiccup more than most.” - Audrey Hepburn
26. “In a cruel and imperfect world, she was living proof that God could still create perfection.” - Rex Reed
27. “Perfection' is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe.... If you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.” - David D. Burns
28. “We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.” - William Shakespeare
29. “The woman is the most perfect doll that i have dressed with delight and admiration.” - Karl Lagerfeld
30. “The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect.More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation.” - Naomi Wolf
31. “Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible.” - Rebecca Solnit
32. “Where utility ends and decoration begins is perfection.” - Jack Gardner
33. “There are two kinds of perfect: The one you can never achieve, and the other, by just being yourself.” - Lauren King
34. “In this world, perfection is an illusion. Reagrdless of all those who utter the contrary, this is the reality. Obviously mediocre fools will forever lust for perfection and seek it out. However, what meaning is there in perfection? None. Not a bit. ...After perfection there exists nothing higher. Not even room for creation which means there is no room for wisdom or talent either. Understand? To scientists like ourselves, perfection is despair. - Kurotsuchi Mayuri (Bleach 306)” - Tite Kubo
35. “if you gone come in second, you're just the first loser!” - Tiger Woods
36. “Normal is over rated, and so is spelling.You want perfection? Go out and buy a spell check, but know this: Spellcheck won't keep you warm at night or love you unconditionaly. I will stick to being abnormal and a bad speller. Makes life more interesting. After all, what fun is there in being normal or perfect?” - Cristina Marrero
37. “My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.” - Stan Getz
38. “Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness” - Leon Tolstoy
39. “We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such an intelligence.” - Pierre Simon de Laplace
40. “I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.” - Portia De Rossi
41. “Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.” - William A. Dembski
42. “Even if you think you're doing well and have it all figured out, there is a voice you will always inevitably hear at some point which nags at you and says "but wait..." Don't ever dismiss it, listen to what it has to say. Life will never be close enough to perfect, and listening to that voice means stepping outside of yourself and considering your own wrongdoings and flaws.” - Ashly Lorenzana
43. “Jerry: Oh, you don't understand, Osgood! Ehhhh... I'm a man.Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.” - Billy Wilder
44. “Certainly it's a rare glimpse into the lives of the Secular Ancients. They don't seem as bad as the Dominion histories make them out to be. Though clearly they were imperfect.""I don't deny that they were imperfect," Julian said in a distant voice. "I'm not uncritical of the Secular Ancients, Adam. They had all sorts of vices, and they committed one sin for which I can never bring myself to entirely forgive them.""What sin is that?""They evolved into us," he said.” - Robert Charles Wilson
45. “Perfection's stuck.” - Toba Beta
46. “Even when we strive for perfection, life is nothing more than an attempt to achieve it through a series of greater or smaller imperfections.” - Peter Prange
47. “So from now on, screw "perfect." Forget for a while about what kind of person you want to be, and just be the best version of the person you are. Figure out which of your classmates you genuinely like (not who you want to like you), and get to know them by telling your own stories and listening to theirs. Hang out with the people you think are cool, not the people you'd like to be considered cool by. Do things because they interest you, not because they make you look interesting... and then, take stock in a month and see whether you're not happier, healthier, and working on some actual friendships with other imperfect-but-lovely humans.” - Kat Rosenfield
48. “Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far.The secret is in action - here and now.It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself.Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect- whatever your idea of perfection may be.All you need is courage.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj
49. “There were never strawberries like the ones we hadthat sultry afternoonsitting on the stepof the open french windowfacing each otheryour knees held in minethe blue plates in our lapsthe strawberries glisteningin the hot sunlightwe dipped them in sugarlooking at each othernot hurrying the feastfor one to comethe empty plates laid on the stone togetherwith the two forks crossedand I bent towards yousweet in that airin my armsabandoned like a childfrom your eager mouththe taste of strawberriesin my memorylean back againlet me love youlet the sun beaton our forgetfulnessone hour of allthe heat intenseand summer lightningon the Kilpatrick hillslet the storm wash the plates.” - Edwin Morgan
50. “Perfection is insignificant. Is boring.” - Robert Reed
51. “Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.” - Anne Lamott
52. “God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection.” - Oswald Chambers
53. “I like her," Brad said, chuckling."For a Red Sox tee shirt wearing woman I guess she's okay," Jason grumbled."Does no one care that she just manhandled me?" Trevor demanded, facing the men who should be properly outraged on his behalf.Jason snorted. "A s long as she brings me food she can bitch slap you and call you spanky."Trevor narrowed his eyes on the men who dared laugh at his pain.Betraying bastards.” - R.L. Mathewson
54. “HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, soWHYpush to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree isWHERE you want to be? Faultless. Finished. Incomparable. People can never be these, and anyway,WHENdid creating a flawless facade become a more vital goal than learning to love the personWHOlives inside your skin? The outside belongs to others. Only you should decide for you -WHATis perfect.” - Ellen Hopkins
55. “The only problem with her is that she is too perfect. She is bad in a way that entices, and good in a way that comforts. She is mischief but then she is the warmth of home. The dreams of the wild and dangerous but the memories of childhood and gladness. She is perfection. And when given something perfect, it is the nature of man to dedicate his mind to finding something wrong with it and then when he is able to find something wrong with it, he rejoices in his find, and sees only the flaw, becoming blind to everything else! And this is why man is never given anything that is perfect, because when given the imperfect and the ugly, man will dedicate his mind to finding what is good with the imperfect and upon finding one thing good with the extremely flawed, he will only see the one thing good, and no longer see everything that is ugly. And so....man complains to God for having less than what he wants... but this is the only thing that man can handle. Man cannot handle what is perfect. It is the nature of the mortal to rejoice over the one thing that he can proudly say that he found on his own, with no help from another, whether it be a shadow in a perfect diamond, or a faint beautiful reflection in an extremely dull mirror.” - C. JoyBell C.
56. “There is desire in the perfect, beauty in the imperfect.Thus I lust over the flawless,and fall amorously forceless to the flawed.” - Ilyas Kassam
57. “You say that I'm nobody, and you agree that nobody's perfect.Based on logic, I'm a perfect person according to your opinion.” - Toba Beta
58. “There are moments on stage when everything comes together. Then the kid in the front row coughs.” - Connie Brockway
59. “Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.” - Criss Jami
60. “There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.” - Hermann Hesse
61. “There is no such thing as an infallible doctor.” - Edward E. Rosenbaum
62. “Nothing and no one is perfect. It just takes a good eye to find those hidden imperfections.” - Daphne Delacroix
63. “yearning n. and adj.At te core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.” - David Levithan
64. “There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?” - Thomas Mann
65. “Everything made by human hands looks terrible under magnification--crude, rough, and asymmetrical. But in nature every bit of life is lovely. And the more magnification we use, the more details are brought out, perfectly formed, like endless sets of boxes within boxes.” - Roman Vishniac
66. “For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.” - C. JoyBell C.
67. “Nothing in life has any business being perfect.” - James Goldman
68. “Look you wanna know the truth? I don’t really care about thestats or the cup or the trophy or anything like that. In fact even the games aren’t that important to me. What matters to me is the perfect throw, making the perfect catch, the perfect step and block. Perfection. That's what it's about. It's those moments. When you can feel the perfection of creation. The beauty the physics you know the wonder of mathematics. The elations of action and reaction and that is the kind of perfection that I want to be connected to.” - Samuel Anders
69. “The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did'st by my side remain,Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad exposed to public view,Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).At thy return my blushing was not small,My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.I cast thee by as one unfit for light,The visage was so irksome in my sight,Yet being mine own, at length affection wouldThy blemishes amend, if so I could.I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.In better dress to trim thee was my mind,But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,And take thy way where yet thou art not known.If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;And for thy mother, she alas is poor,Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.” - Anne Bradstreet
70. “The more I try to be perfect; the more I fail.” - Harley King
71. “I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.” - Shelby Foote
72. “I asked if Tyler was an artist. Tyler shrugged...What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand. . . he said how at exactly four-thirty the hand was perfect. The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute Tyler sat in the palm of a perfection he'd created himself. One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.” - Chuck Palahniuk
73. “... food is not simply organic fuel to keep body and soul together, it is a perishable art that must be savoured at the peak of perfection.” - E.A. Bucchianeri
74. “Dont brag about being perfect..imperfections are what makes you attractive..” - Sandra Chami Kassis
75. “Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.” - Dean Koontz
76. “I understand it was Derian who spoiled everything. He purposefully tainted your view of me and forced you to go along with him. I know none of what happened was your idea or your desire, Eena.”She didn’t get up, but spoke from her curled position. Her voice was weak, still heavy with despair. “Derian didn’t force me to do anything.”“But if he hadn’t influenced you, we would be enjoying a pleasant dinner again, telling stories and laughing. I’m sure that would be the case. You would be happy……and so would I.”Eena chuckled without amusement.“You have to admit we shared some very enjoyable evenings, didn’t we? There’s really no reason we can’t put this whole mess behind us and start from where we left off.” He sounded genuinely serious.“You forget,” she reminded him, “I heard your conversation with the Ghengats. This isn’t about Derian, it’s about you.”“Alright,” he admitted with an acquiescent sigh, “so I’m not everything you’d hoped for. But really, what man can ever live up to any woman’s terribly high expectations?”This got her attention. She almost stood up to face him, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Leaning forward, she retorted, “Expecting a man to respect you, to be honest with you, and, oh yes, to not be a shameless murderer—I don’t think those are overly high expectations!”He shrugged, casually excusing his faults. “Nobody’s perfect.”“What do you want?” she finally asked, exasperated.He squatted to her level and stated his desire. “I want you.”Eena thought the expression on his face—the look in his weary blue eyes—appeared strangely sincere. But there was one thing she had learned from all this: never trust a master of deceit.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
77. “The perfect being, huh? There is no such thing as perfect in this world. That may sound cliché, but it’s the truth. The average person admires perfection and seeks to obtain it. But, what’s the point of achieving perfection? There is none. Nothing. Not a single thing. I loathe perfection! If something is perfect, then there is nothing left. There is no room for imagination. No place left for a person to gain additional knowledge or abilities. Do you know what that means? For scientists such as ourselves, perfection only brings despair. It is our job to create things more wonderful than anything before them, but never to obtain perfection. A scientist must be a person who finds ecstasy while suffering from that antimony. In short, the moment that foolishness left your mouth and reached my ears, you had already lost. Of course, that’s assuming you are a scientist” - Tite Kubo
78. “Perfection of effort is not required, by the way. It is the consistency of attempting to work these tools that brings the progress. It’s like anything else. If I want to tone muscle, lifting a ten-pound weight a few times every day will move me toward my goal much quicker than hoisting a fifty-pound barbell once a week. Yes, it really is true: “Slow and steady wins the race.” Just try a little, every day. You’ll see.” - Holly Mosier
79. “There is one advantage to realizing that you're never going to get it right: you do begin to stop expecting everyone else to get it right too, which makes for less frustration when other people turn out to be just as human as you are.” - Jeff Wilson
80. “The power of thought is the light of knowledge, the power of will is the energy of character, the power of heart is love. Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man.” - Ludwig Feuerbach
81. “You are perfect, Avery. Just like you are, flaws and everything.” - Shana Norris
82. “Oftentimes people expect Christians to be perfect but the reality is...Spiritual perfection is imperfection! God then does His best work.” - Sanjo Jendayi
83. “Perfect, complete, needing nothing, simply all there was, was the dark.” - Laurell K. Hamilton
84. “Forget perfect on the first try. In the face of frustration, your best tool is a few deep breaths, and remembering that you can do anything once you've practed two hundred times.” - Miriam Peskowitz
85. “allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...]There is no royal road to perfection.” - Frederick Douglass
86. “Wir lernen aus unserer eigenen Geschichte, wozu der Mensch fähig ist. Deshalb dürfen wir uns nicht einbilden, wir seien nun als Menschen anders und besser geworden. Es gibt keine endgültig errungene moralische Vollkommenheit - für niemanden und kein Land! Wir haben als Menschen gelernt, wir bleiben als Menschen gefährdet. Aber wir haben die Kraft, Gefährdungen immer von neuem zu überwinden."[Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages]” - Richard von Weizsäcker
87. “Why would anyone want perfection when growth comes from flaws?” - Shannon L. Alder
88. “I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.” - Oscar Wilde
89. “A perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.” - Benjamin Franklin
90. “...I deliberately spilled the black ink of despair because my perfect soul was a stained glass illusion - can you understand that?...” - John Geddes
91. “you cross the field in the snow leaving tracks in perfect whiteness ...disturbing my placid universe...marking the landscape within me ...” - John Geddes
92. “I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere.[Interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 5, 2007]” - Cormac McCarthy
93. “Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change God hasn't promised. It's possible to expect too little, but under-expectation is usually a cynical reaction to dashed hopes for too much. We manage to interpret biblical teaching to support our longing for perfection. As a result, we measure our progress by standards we will never meet until heaven.” - Larry Crabb
94. “The only skill that cannot be perfected is perfection itself.” - Daphne Delacroix
95. “Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.” - Lauren Oliver
96. “There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.” - Frank Herbert
97. “Don't worry about getting perfect, just keep getting better.” - Frank Peretti
98. “You know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it's real difficult in life” - Woody Allen
99. “I often ask myself, 'Who would Jesus vote for?' Then I start to think that he wouldn't vote at all; however, it would not be out of apathy or disinterest, but out of perfection and light. As a miracle worker, I think he would, by the power of God's teachings, the perseverance and the truth, influence in a modern sense whoever is put into office how to best serve his fellow men. One, like his skeptics, may find that impractical. But there is a message in that no man in power can slow the momentum of the will of God, and the miracles of his teachings will be forever victorious.” - Criss Jami
100. “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.” - Marcus Aurelius
101. “You can't make the world perfect, Daniel," Michelle said calmly while dusting dirt off her jeans with her delicate hand. "No. I can't," I agreed. "But I can sure help make it better.” - Shannon A Thompson
102. “Fear hadn’t come to him yet. Pain hadn’t come where pain would come. There was only the feeling of having done something perfect at last—the taste of a drink from a cold, pure spring.” - Kurt Vonnegut
103. “To appreciate life's small moments, it helps to have a sense the whole can never be made perfect.” - Alain De Botton
104. “Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.Yet if this sublime fire of infused love burns in your soul, it will inevitably send forth throughout the Church and the world an influence more tremendous than could be estimated by the radius reached by words or by example.” - Thomas Merton
105. “We are beautiful because we are sons and daughters of God, not because we look a certain way.” - Kate Wicker
106. “If I invite God into my life, I am and always will be good enough.” - Kate Wicker
107. “Perhaps a past of bingeing, restricting, or purging comes back to haunt you from time to time. Maybe you have to fight hard battles against vanity, gluttony, and shame. But with God’s saving power, every new day is a gift, an opportunity to detach yourself from tormenting thoughts about food or how you look and to attach yourself to God. Remember, we all hunger for God, more than we hunger for a big bowl of ice cream or a perfect physique.” - Kate Wicker
108. “Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness.” - Criss Jami
109. “Organization isn't about perfection; it's about efficiency, reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money and improving your overall quality of life.” - Christina Scalise
110. “Within these strangely specific conditions, everything is perfect. We are perfect.” - Chuck Klosterman
111. “The night seemed suddenly defiled by the absence of music, as if the silence itself was injecting a sickness that only another song could cure.” - Jake Vander Ark
112. “Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence... but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in our cloud of perversion and nasty objectification was the unrestrained joy of a little girl playing dress-up for the very first time.” - Jake Vander Ark
113. “Every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.” - Jake Vander Ark
114. “Perfection seems sterile; it is final, no mystery in it; it's a product of an assembly line.” - Dejan Stojanovic
115. “There is something perfect to be found in the imperfect: the law keeps balance through the juxtaposition of beauty, which gains perfection through nurtured imperfection.” - Dejan Stojanovic
116. “Everything that looks too perfect is too perfect to be perfect.” - Dejan Stojanovic
117. “In trying to be perfect, He perfected the art of anonymity, Became imperceptible And arrived nowhere from nowhere.” - Dejan Stojanovic
118. “When there is noise and crowds, there is trouble; When everything is silent and perfect, There is just perfection and nothing To fill the air.” - Dejan Stojanovic
119. “Don't wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves.This is precisely why you're stuck. Starting without seeing the end is difficult, so we often wait until we see the end, scanning relentlessly for the right way, the best way and the perfect way.The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.Step by step, page by page, interaction by interaction. As you start moving, you can't help but improve, can't help but incrementally find yourself getting back toward your north star.You might not end up with perfect, but it's significantly more valuable than being stuck.Don't just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.” - Seth Godin
120. “...But living creatures are idiosyncratic. They are created in such a way that they can actualize only what their microscopic minds wish for. The concept of limitless is bound heavily by the minor actualization of what perfection is...” - Lionel Suggs
121. “We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.” - Susan Sontag
122. “One aspect of perfection, after all, it stands to reason, will be that our need for imperfection will cease. Or, perhaps more precisely: that imperfection itself will cease to have meaning.” - Ron Currie Jr.
123. “You had to break, to be unbroken. In the brokenness, I had found, that which was unbroken. That which was perfect, and beautiful, and complete.” - T. Scott McLeod
124. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but love is the perfection of it".'Perfection” - Steve Copland
125. “Djuna had wanted a life of desire and freedom, not luxury but beauty, not security but fulfillment, not perfection but a perfect moment like this one...” - Anais Nin
126. “I collected pictures and I drew pictures and I looked at the pictures by myself. And because no one else ever saw them, the pictures were perfect and true. They were alive.” - Helen Oyeyemi
127. “...when you're broken, everything gets a little honester - you make mistakes and don't give a damn - you give up on perfection, but get real...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain
128. “It's hard to do," I said. Wes looked at me. "What is?" I swallowed, not sure why I'd said this out loud. "Get it right.” - Sarah Dessen
129. “No one is perfect and perfectly holy but God alone".~R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods
130. “If it looks a bit rough, a little worn, with little splotches - those have the swetest flavor. The ones that are perfect on the outside tend to be a bit more bland. That is true about many things in life.” - Jeff Wheeler
131. “Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away.” - Haruki Murakami
132. “In the depth of our heart, we already know that we are perfect as we are. In the depth of our inner being, we already know that life is perfect as it is.” - Swami Dhyan Giten
133. “Sin is man's, last attempt to perfection.” - Anthony Liccione
134. “Perfection is too high a goal to strive for. Sometimes working hard bringsmore satisfaction in the end.” - Megan Hart
135. “There is no such thing as the perfect relationship. You can however, create a relationship which is perfect. Perfection comes from your commitment to being a teacher and a student. Being as curious and playful as children. Having the maturity of an adult, and being a friend, partner, and lover. Perfection often comes from imperfection. So, embrace the challenges and learn to grow together, not apart….” - James A. Murphy
136. “Perfect is a dream that you wake up from and spend forever trying to remember.” - Joseph Eastwood
137. “True perfection has to be imperfect. I know that sounds foolish, but it's true.” - Noel Gallagher
138. “You are the most ludicrous excuse for a man I've ever known - but there isn't a centimetre of you that I don't think is perfect.” - Lucy Robinson
139. “There is perfect love in Heaven!” - Anne Brontë
140. “Everyone has their own varying means of measuring thing. Sometimes people can agree on something, but other times they can't.” - ichtys
141. “This boy was so far out of my league it was embarrassing. I found myself staring at him, trying to find some minute flaw that might justify dragging him back to my level. Finding nothing, I decided that having a dimple on only one cheek was practically a deformity.” - G.J. Walker-Smith
142. “Utopia never really is. And the perfection we seek will always disappoint.” - Daniel Xiao Wang
143. “Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend, the other who has privately lost something to do with innocence and gained something to do with knowledge and adulthood that can never be undone. I feel sometimes there are things that tear me in two directions, that there are two sets of thoughts that grow side by side. But then I realize that I am whole, whatever that means and does not mean; I am complete without the need for additions or alteration.” - Abigail Tarttelin
144. “Hey, you know I might not be perfect! But I'm a wonderful work in progress!” - D.C. Akers
145. “Alexander moved her off him, laid her down, was over her, was pressed into her, crushing her. Anthony was right there, he didn't care, he was trying to inhale her, trying to absorb her into himself. "All this time you were stepping out in front of me, Tatiana," he said. "Now I finally understand. You hid me on Bethel Island for eight months. For two years you hid me and deceived me - to save me. I am such an idiot," he whispered. "Wretch or not, ravaged or not, in a carapace or not, there you still were, stepping out for me, showing the mute mangled stranger your brave and indifferent face."Her eyes closed, her arms tightened around his neck. "That stranger is my life," she whispered. They crawled away from Anthony, from their only bed, onto a blanket on the floor, barricading themselves behind the table and chairs. "You left our boy to go find me, and this is what you found..." Alexander whispered, on top of her, pushing inside her, searching for peace.Crying out underneath him, Tatiana clutched his shoulders."This is what you brought back from Sachsenhausen." his movement was tense, deep, needful. Oh God. Now there was comfort. "You thought you were bringing back him, but Tania, you brought back me.""Shura...you'll have to do..." Her fingers were clamped into his scars."In you," said Alexander, lowering his lips to her parted mouth and cleaving their flesh, "are the answers to all things."All the rivers flowed into the sea and still the sea was not full.” - Paullina Simons
