Perfection quotes

Perfection

1.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

1.4K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside perfection — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Perfection quotes (page 22 of 70)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

St. Vincent Musician
Perfection

"Perfection consists in one thing alone, which is doing the will of God. For, according to Our Lord's words, it suffices for perfection to deny self, to take up the cross and to follow Him. Now who denies himself and takes up his cross and follows Christ better than he who seeks not to do his own will, but always that of God? Behold, now, how little is needed to become as Saint? Nothing more than to acquire the habit of willing, on every occasion, what God wills."

Read quote 3 likes
Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
Perfection

"Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past."

Read quote 3 likes
Susan Hill Author
Perfection

"The more contemplative gardener, seeing the garden as a whole, the design of it, and its nature as a still place of delight and refreshment, will wait and hope for the moment when it seems to achieve perfection. Awareness of when such moments are most likely helps to make them happen; they will not be entirely accidental but anticipated; everything will be planned to encourage them."

Read quote 3 likes
Susan Sontag Essayist, Critic, Activist
Perfection

"Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy."

Read quote 3 likes
Susan Sontag Essayist, Critic, Activist
Perfection

"In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art , Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community."

Read quote 3 likes
Swami Vivekananda Spiritual Leader, Philosopher
Perfection

"It is too often believed that a person in his progress towards perfection passes from error to truth; that when he passes on from one thought to another, he must necessarily reject the first. But no error can lead to truth. The soul passing through its different stages goes from truth to truth, and each stage is true; it goes from lower truth to higher truth."

Read quote 3 likes
Swami Vivekananda Spiritual Leader, Philosopher
Perfection

"All perfection is there already in the soul. But this perfection has been covered up by nature; layer after layer of nature is covering this purity of the soul."

Read quote 3 likes
Swami Vivekananda Spiritual Leader, Philosopher
Perfection

"All progress and power are already in every man; perfection is man's nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course."

Read quote 3 likes