Quotes & Sayings About Perfection Being Good

Libertarians (like anarchists and Marxists) generally believe that human nature is good, though damaged by certain social institutions. Conservatives, on the contrary, hold that "in Adam's fall we sinned all": human nature, though compounded of both good and evil, is irremediably flawed; so the perfection of society is impossible, all human beings being imperfect. — Russell Kirk

Being a disciple is more than being good: it is about searching for perfection through the love of Jesus Christ. — Michael J. Coyner

I think people expect too much from marriage today,' he said. 'They expect perfection. Every moment should be bliss. That's TV or movies. But that is not the human experience.
... twenty good minutes here, forty good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren't so great, you don't junk the whole thing. It's okay to have an argument. It's okay that the other one nudges you a little, bothers you a little. It's part of being close to someone.
But the joy you get from that same closeness
when you watch your children, when you wake up and smile at each other
that ... is a blessing. People forget that. — Mitch Albom

A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy. — Joseph Addison

This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our relation to Almighty God-we do not merely give a religious education because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may at the same time be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection. — Charlotte M. Mason

This toxic striving for perfection is a female thing. How many men obsess about being perfect? For men, generally, good enough is good enough. — Jane Fonda

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection. — Charles Darwin

How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the perfect happiness of a state consists in the subjects obeying their prince, the prince obeying the laws, and the laws being equitable and always directed to the good of the public? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You know, in my opinion, being ridiculous is sometimes even a good thing, and better than that: we can forgive one another more quickly, and acquire humility more quickly; after all, we can't understand everything at once, we can't begin directly from perfection! In order to achieve perfection, we must first of all fail to understand a great many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand very well. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Wesley's emphasis on holiness must be seen in this light. He did not teach "sinless perfection" but he did teach that love could, and must, become the primary motivating force in the Christian's life. He repeatedly defined holiness as loving God with all one's being and loving one's neighbor as oneself. This meant two things for Wesley: God's grace is sufficient to perfect the Christian in love, and this love empowers and impels the believer to good works. We must give ourselves to God "in humble faith, and in holy, active, patient love! — Howard A. Snyder

Good sense avoids all extremes, and requires us to be soberly rational. This unbending and virtuous stiffness of ancient times shocks too much the ordinary customs of our own; it requires too great perfection from us mortals; we must yield to the times without being too stubborn; it is the height of folly to busy ourselves in correcting the world. — Moliere

I met another man who considered himself perfect, but he was thoroughly mad; and I do not believe that any of the pretenders to perfection are better than good maniacs ... for while a man has got a spark of reason left in him, he cannot, unless he is the most impudent of impostors, talk about being perfect. — Charles Spurgeon

It is to be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is. — Oscar Wilde

I am perfectly satisfied that my Father and my god is a cheerful, pleasant, lively, and good-natured Being. Why? Because I am cheerful, pleasant, lively and good-natured when I have His Spirit ... . That arises from the perfection of His attributes; He is a jovial, lively person, and a beautiful man. — Heber C. Kimball

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge
he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil
he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor
he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire
he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy
all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is desired to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was
that robot of the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love
he was not man. — Ayn Rand

Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of "respectability" in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong. — Edgar Allan Poe

The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the mathematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical systems, and all who love perfection more than life. The world of existence is fleeting, vague, without sharp boundaries, without any clear plan or arrangement, but it contains all thoughts and feelings, all the data of sense, and all physical objects, everything that can do either good or harm, everything that makes any difference to the value of life and the world. According to our temperaments, we shall prefer the contemplation of the one or of the other. — Bertrand Russell

We are to copy no human being. There is no human being wise enough to be our criterion. We are to look to the man Christ Jesus, who is complete in the perfection of righteousness and holiness. He is the Author and finisher of our faith. He is the pattern Man. His experience is the measure of the experience that we are to gain. His character is our model. Let us, then, take our minds off the perplexities and the difficulties of this life, and fix them on him, that by beholding we may be changed into his likeness. We may behold Christ to good purpose. We may safely look to him; for he is all-wise. As we look to him and think of him, he will be formed within, the hope of glory. — Ellen G. White

Of course present knowledge of psychology is nearer to zero than to complete perfection, and its applications to teaching must therefore be often incomplete, indefinite, and insecure. The application of psychology to teaching is more like that of botany and chemistry to farming than like that of physiology and pathology to medicine. Anyone of good sense can farm fairly well without science, and anyone of good sense can teach fairly well without knowing and applying psychology. Still, as the farmer with the knowledge of the applications of botany and chemistry to farming is, other things being equal, more successful than the farmer without it, so the teacher will, other things being equal, be the more successful who can apply psychology, the science of human nature, to the problems of the school. (pp. 9-10) — Edward Lee Thorndike

That is why humans resist life. To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest
fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we
really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our lives trying
to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of
the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else. — Miguel Ruiz

motivation for not eating meat and dairy is to maintain optimal health, not to rid myself of the obsession and compulsion that are the hallmark of addiction. If obsession and compulsion are the issue - smoking cigarettes, not being able to stop texting your toxic ex, self-harm - and you want to get past it, you need a Bright Line. If health is your objective, there is no evidence that perfect is better than "really good." Seriously. You can comply with a health goal 95 percent of the time, and it will benefit you as much as 100 percent perfection. — Susan Peirce Thompson

Every living being has the potential to become a Buddha: someone who has completely purified his or her mind of all faults and limitations and has brought all good qualities to perfection. — Kelsang Gyatso