“I have always suspected that correctness is the last refuge of those who have nothing to say.”
“One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.”
“You can spend a lifetime, and, if you're honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.”
“Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”
“If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.”
“Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.”
“''Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it,'' said the Philosopher.”
“American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.”
“Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.”
“No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.”
“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.”
“The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.”
“Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.”
“It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.”
“I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.”
“The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.”
“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”
“The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection --even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano --is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.”
“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.”
“Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.”
“Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.”
“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.”