Perfects Quotes & Sayings

Our praying, to be strong, must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Opportunity, to statesmen, is as the just degree of heat to chemists; it perfects all the work. — John Suckling

Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. — Frank Pittman

faith presupposes reason and perfects it, and reason, enlightened by faith, finds the strength to rise to knowledge of God and spiritual realities'.15 For Ratzinger, faith and reason, theology and philosophy, are symbiotically, and not extrinsic-ally, related. Faith without reason ends in fideism, but reason without faith ends in nihilism. — Tracey Rowland

The free exchange of consent properly witnessed by the Church establishes the marriage bond. Sexual union consummates it - seals it, completes it, perfects it. Sexual union, then, is where the words of the wedding vows become flesh. — Christopher West

I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved ... — George MacDonald

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The main thing that develops positional judgement, that perfects it and makes it many-sided, is detailed analytical work, sensible tournament practice, a self-critical attitude to your games and a rooting out of all the defects in your play. — Alexander Kotov

One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp. — Ed Wood

When God wants to drill a man, And thrill a man, And skill a man, When God wants to mold a man To play the noblest part; When He yearns with all His heart To create so great and bold a man That all the world shall be amazed, Watch His methods, watch His ways! How He ruthlessly perfects Whom He royally elects! How He hammers him and hurts him, And with mighty blows converts him Into trial shapes of clay which Only God understands; While his tortured heart is crying And he lifts beseeching hands! How He bends but never breaks When his good He undertakes; How He uses whom He chooses, And with every purpose fuses him; But every act induces him To try His splendor out - God knows what He's about. SELECTED Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character. GOETHE — Lettie B. Cowman

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it. — Francis Bacon

Art does not surpass nature but perfects it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Nature and art: The material and the workmanship. There is no beauty unaided, no excellence that does not sink to the barbarous, unless saved by art: It redeems the bad and perfects the good. Because nature commonly forsakes us at her best, take refuge in art. The best in nature is raw without art, and the excellent is lacking if it lacks culture. Without cultivation everyone is a clown and needs polish, fine attributes notwithstanding. — Baltasar Gracian

Whenever you touch a poem that caresses your soul, breathe it gently for it might be the wind that perfects your life's goal. — A. Saleh

Discipline is training that corrects and perfects our mental faculties or molds our moral character. Discipline is control gained by enforced obedience. It is the deliberate cultivation of inner order. — Charles R. Swindoll

AS the falling rain prepares the earth for the future crops of grain and fruit, so the rains of many sorrows showering upon the heart prepare and mellow it for the coming of that wisdom that perfects the mind and gladdens the heart. As the clouds darken the earth but to cool and fructify it, so the clouds of grief cast a shadow over the heart to prepare it for nobler things. The hour of sorrow is the hour of reverence. It puts an end to the shallow sneer, the ribald jest, the cruel calumny; it softens the heart with sympathy, and enriches the mind with thoughtfulness. Wisdom is mainly recollection of all that was learned by sorrow. Do not think that your sorrow will remain; it will pass away like a cloud. Where self ends, grief passes away. — James Allen

Invariably will you find perseverance exemplified as the radical principle in every truly great character. It facilitates, perfects, and consolidates the execution of the plan conceived, and renders profitable its results when attained. By continuing to advance steadily in the same way, light constantly increases, obstacles disappear, efficient habits are confirmed, experience is acquired, the use of the best means is reduced to easy action, and success becomes more sure. — Elias Lyman Magoon

Would any link be missing from the whole chain of science and art, if woman, if woman's work, were excluded from it? Let us acknowledge the exception - it proves the rule - that woman is capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork - in short, everything which is not a craft; and precisely because in the things mentioned woman perfects herself, because in them she obeys the only artistic impulse in her nature, which is to captivate. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Time perfects men as well as destroys them. — Chanakya

Every act of true love towards a human being bears witness to and perfects the spiritual fecundity of the family, since it is an act of obedience to the deep inner dynamism of love as self-giving to others. — Pope John Paul II

Only silence perfects silence. — A.R. Ammons

As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky. — Gustave Flaubert

No one returns from Christianity to the same state he was before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature. Therefore many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which pagans possessed. — C.S. Lewis

the world, which cannot or will not discriminate between real devotion and the indiscretion of those who fancy themselves devout, grumbles and finds fault with devotion, which is really nowise concerned in these errors. No indeed, my child, the devotion which is true hinders nothing, but on the contrary it perfects everything; and that which runs counter to the rightful vocation of any one is, you may be sure, a spurious devotion. — Francis De Sales

A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great. ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree. — Ming-Dao Deng

The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous. — Madame De Stael

True spirituality is the acceptance of earth-life. A true seeker is he who accepts life, transforms life and perfects life so that the earth-life can become a conscious instrument of God. — Sri Chinmoy

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself. — Thomas Carlyle

Suffering perfects the soul. — James Cook

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of person ... the one who accepts the call of God in Christ Jesus. — Oswald Chambers

Grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it. — Thomas Aquinas

Everything that we do wires pathways in our brain. So every time you practice a song on a guitar, you are wiring that into your brain, and each time you practice it, the wiring grows more intricate, more precise. That's why you improve over time. That's why repetition and practice lead to success in all things. Eventually the wiring perfects itself and your fingers just know where to go. You don't think about it anymore. It becomes a part of you. — L.T. Vargus

Faith in revelation does not destroy the rationality of our knowledge but rather permits it to develop more fully. Even as, indeed, grace does not destroy nature but heals and perfects it, so faith, through the influence it wields from above over reason as reason, permits the development of a far more true and fruitful rational activity. — Etienne Gilson

A fundamental principle of Catholic theology is that grace perfects nature rather than setting it aside; and that means that the Christian life is not a two-layer cake, the supernatural simply added on to the natural. It transforms the natural but by perfecting it, not by demeaning it. — Peter Kreeft

There are many points in the history of an invention which the inventor himself is apt to overlook as trifling, but in which posterity never fail to take a deep interest. The progress of the human mind is never traced with such a lively interest as through the steps by which it perfects a great invention; and there is certainly no invention respecting which this minute information will be more eagerly sought after, than in the case of the steam-engine. — David Brewster

If we hope to live in victory, we must keep our eyes off of the world and on the One who perfects us through grace. — Darlene Schacht

The Art of Peace is the religion that is not a religion; it perfects and completes all religions. — Morihei Ueshiba

The child's conquest of independence begins with his first introduction to life. While he is developing, he perfects himself and overcomes every obstacle that he finds in his path. A vital force is active within him, and this guides his efforts towards their goal. It is a force called the 'horme', by Sir Percy Nunn. — Maria Montessori

The radical significance of Christ's substitutionary Priesthood does not lie in the fact that His perfect Self-offering perfects and completes our imperfect offerings, but that these are displaced by His completed Self-offering. We can only offer what has already been offered on our behalf, and offer it by the only mode appropriate to such a substitutionary offering, by prayer, thanksgiving, and praise. — T.F. Torrance

It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over over any soul be loved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. — George MacDonald

It is a union with a Higher Good by love, that alone is endless perfection. The only sufficient object for man must be something that adds to and perfects his nature, to which he must be united in love; somewhat higher than himself, yea, the highest of all, the Father of spirits. That alone completes a spirit and blesses it, - to love Him, the spring of spirits. — Robert B. Leighton

A man perfects himself by working. — Thomas Carlyle

Then the necessary decline of non-voluntary learning and rise of the self-assured will which perfects itself in the glorious sunlight of the free person may be somewhat expressed as follows: knowledge must die and rise again as will and create itself anew each day as a free person. — Max Stirner

A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man. — Thomas Carlyle

Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself. — Madame De Stael

Time perfects all living beings as well as kills them; it alone is awake when all others are asleep. Time is insurmountable. — Chanakya

All war is based in deception (cfr. Sun Tzu, "The Art of War").
Definition of deception: "The practice of deliberately making somebody believe things that are not true. An act, a trick or device entended to deceive somebody".
Thus, all war is based in metaphor.
All war necessarily perfects itself in poetry.
Poetry (since indefinable) is the sense of seduction.
Therefore, all war is the storytelling of seduction, and seduction is the nature of war. — Pola Oloixarac

The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections. — Djuna Barnes

The task of being right is a task the father perfects over time. — Ben Marcus

The skills of the modern artist are the opposite of those of the craftsman: instead of acquiring techniques for producing classes of objects, the artist today perfects the means suited to his particular work. — Harold Rosenberg

Imperfects are funny, lovable and perfect to be happy. Perfects are appreciated and left alone everytime!!!. — Nelson Jack

The guys who fear becoming
fathers don't understand that fathering
is not something perfect men do, but something
that perfects the man. The end product of child
raising is not the child, but the parent. — Frank Pittman

The eyes start love; intimacy perfects it. — Publilius Syrus

The hill is like an old woman, all her human obligations met, who sits at work day after day, in a kind of rapt leisure, at an intricate embroidery. She has time for all things. Because she does not expect ever to be finished, she is endlessly patient with details. She perfects flower and leaf, feather and song, adorning the briefest life in great beauty as though it were meant to last forever. — Wendell Berry

[Louis] Brandeis improves the prose. He simplifies it and perfects the balance of the sentence so it becomes even more memorable and aphoristic. — Jeffrey Rosen

Studying the liberal arts is an intransitive activity; the effects of studying these arts stays within the individual and perfects the faculties of the mind and spirit. The study of liberal arts is like the blooming of a rose; it brings to fruition the possibilities of human nature. The utilitarian or servile arts enable one to be a servant - of another person, of the state, of a corporation, or of a business - and to earn a living. The liberal arts, in contrast, teach one how to live; they train the faculties and bring them to perfection; they enable a person to rise above his material environment to live an intellectual, a rational, and therefore a free life in gaining truth. — Miriam Joseph

True: fear is the beginning of wisdom, but love perfects it! — Stefan Emunds

There's a shortage of perfects breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours. — Cary Elwes

Over a pint in the pub, you have a good moan
That's the fate of every Magpie
While Mam perfects her game show skills
Giving talks at the WI — John Walter Bratton

The belief in a Divine education, open to each man and to all men, takes up into itself all that is true in the end proposed by culture, supplements, and perfects it. — John Campbell Shairp