Imperfection quotes
321 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside imperfection — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"As for the spirit of poverty, I do not remember any moment when it was not in me, although only to that unhappily small extent compatible with my imperfection. I fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him. I always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually I felt the same way about prison."
"It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite."
"We should cultivate the optimistic temperament, and endeavour to see the good that dwells in everything. If we sit down and lament over the imperfection of our bodies and our minds, we profit nothing; it is the heroic endeavour to subdue adverse circumstances that carries our spirit upward."
"I am not what I ought to be! Ah! how imperfect and deficient! - I am not what I wish to be! I 'abhor what is evil,' and I would 'cleave to what is good!' - I am not what I hope to be! Soon, soon, I shall put off mortality: and with mortality all sin and imperfection! Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was - a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the Apostle, and acknowledge; By the grace of God, I am what I am!"
"We can never attain to perfection while we have an affection for any imperfection."
"The big thing I've discovered, the big secret, is that it's all about how happy you are. It's the ultimate thing. People forget your flaws and imperfections if they see you're happy."
"One... gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed."
"Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods."
"Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new animal, but it is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent; since a part of the embryon-animal is, or was, a part of the parent; and therefore in strict language it cannot be said to be entirely new at the time of its production; and therefore it may retain some of the habits of the parent-system. (1794)"
"The more you mature, you realize that this imperfections make your more beautiful."
"Imperfections are attractive when their owners are happy with them."
"Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people."
"Without imperfection, you or I would not exist."
"Look at me as an example. I don't have the best education or the best looks. Where I'm from in Nigeria is not entertainment driven, it's the northern part of Nigeria and over there they hardly pay attention to entertainment. I came out of that place to attain this level of success. I always say if I can get here with all of these imperfections then no one has the excuse to fail in life."
"The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues.You can't separate them. They're wedded."
"Compassion isn't some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we're trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at."
"There is always a but in this imperfect world."
"No reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head."
"He in whom the love of truth predominates . . . submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion; but he is a candidate for truth . . . and respects the highest law of his being."
"Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections their author."
