Perfection quotes
1.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside perfection — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Perfection. Excellence. What a passionate lover. But once having tasted the lips of excellence, once having given oneself to its perfection, how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable, the just okay and not a stroke better."
"Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong."
"Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success."
"Nothing quite new is perfect."
"Producing perfection from imperfection is, after all, the highest of art forms."
"Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness"
"We must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals."
"We should amuse our evening hours of life in cultivating the tender plants, and bringing them to perfection, before they are transplanted to a happier clime."
"He only moves toward the perfection of his art whose criticism surpasses his achievement."
"Utopias rest on the fallacy that perfection is a legitimate goal of human existence."
"You would attain to the divine perfection."
"Measure not by the scale of perfection the meager product of reality."
"To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well."
"We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created."
"It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists."
"To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality"
"The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine."
"God has set the type of marriage through creation. Each creature seeks its perfection in another."
"Did you measure to attain your height? Did you use geometry to radiate your limb? Did you lament storm-torn branches? Did you inventory your leaves for the sun? You did none of these things, yet man in his cleverness Cannot match your perfection."
"The best painters, as they progress in reputation and towards perfection, are found to dispense more and more with the technique of the art, for simpler methods. Simplicity never fails to charm."
