Quotes & Sayings About Striving For Perfection

Perfection may be an island out of reach, but setting your sails toward it makes for a magnificent voyage. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The bottom line is this: looking beyond all of your false assurance, religious activity, or fair exchanges, do you live with a desire for obedience to the Word of God? Is that the goal you're striving for - not for the perfection of your life (which comes only in heaven)? And when you disobey it, as we all do daily, do you have a sense of conviction and remorse that draws you to confess it to God? If that isn't there, it's a fair question whether you're a Christian. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

And with a few moments like that, with doubt from here and there, and within ourselves we were just striving for excellence. We had somehow understood and felt that all the musicians who would come to the House later on, that all the singers, the big artists, were striving for excellence in their life and we thought a house for them, there's no limit to the excellence it should have because it should match their strive for perfection — Jorn Utzon

Perfection is what you are striving for, but perfection is an impossibility. However, striving for perfection is not an impossibility. Do the best you can under the conditions that exist. That is what counts. — John Wooden

We must remember that we are practicing. We are learning, and we will not be virtuous overnight. Just as "men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts"3. You may very well say that practice makes perfect, and in our case perfection is what we are striving for. — Samantha McEnhimer

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

Perfection, fortunately, is not the only alternative to mediocrity. A more sensible alternative is excellence. Striving for excellence is stimulating and rewarding; striving for perfection
in practically anything
is both neurotic and futile. — Ed Bliss

Mutual funds dare to be average. In fact, they dare to be lousy. They have long since ceased striving for anything resembling perfection when it comes to managing your money. — Gary Weiss

The saddest thing in the world was that human beings, for all their ardent striving and desire, could never achieve physical, emotional, or intellectual perfection. The species was doomed to imperfection; it thrashed forever in despair or denial of that fact. — Dean Koontz

Striving for perfection is neurotic; striving for excellence is progress. Excellence is continuous improvement. There is nothing that cannot be done better or improved the next time. — Shiv Khera

Answer: "First, so that the longer we live the more we may come to know our sinfulness and the more eagerly look to Christ for forgiveness of sins and righteousness." Even in the Christian life we need this first use of the law to drive us out of ourselves to cling to our Savior. "Second, so that we may never stop striving, and never stop praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, to be renewed more and more after God's image, until after this life we reach our goal: perfection."16 "Because — Michael S. Horton

Everything assumes a different intensity when you are feeling the pain of loss. Be prepared. A minor annoyance that you might once have managed with a shrug now becomes a nuclear crisis! You are no doubt going to do things perfectly imperfectly. That is part of our path as humans. Forget about striving for perfection while dealing with grief! If you beat yourself up every time you forget something, have a breakdown, or don't do something correctly then you're going to end up very black and blue. I guarantee you won't want to look in the mirror! So be kinder and more patient with yourself. — Elizabeth Berrien

For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony. — Michelangelo

We must have the courage to be imperfect while striving for perfection. — Patricia T. Holland

Perfection is worth striving for, even if it is ultimately unattainable in this life. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Learn the difference between striving for excellence and striving for perfection. The first is attainable; the second is not. — Douglas Merrill

Nobody gets everything they want. There will always be something. New problems arise. Instead of striving for perfection, strive for contentedness. Find a way to be happy what you already have & you'll always have exactly what you need. — Adam J. Kurtz

Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence - doing your best. — Laurence Olivier

I always had the sense that nothing was never good enough - striving for perfection. My mother and I had a sort of typical mother-daughter relationship. — Dorothy Hamill

Improvement in one area often adversely affects another area, and striving for perfection in one may lead to failure in another. — Stephen F. Rosenstiel

I'd love to stay in baseball, but I won't beg. I'd love to work with young umpires. I think I could teach them, help them develop. I can spot flaws, help them get over the hump. You're striving for perfection every game, yet you never achieve it. If baseball wants me, I'm available. — Doug Harvey

The Qur'an does not ask for human perfection, but rather
asks that we persevere in striving for self-improvement and that we never
become complacent or despondent about our progress. — Jeffrey Lang

There's no such thing as Perfection. But, in striving for perfection, we can achieve excellence. — Vince Lombardi

Striving for excellence is a positive quality. Striving for perfection is self-defeating. — Melody Beattie

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness. — Tara Brach

Homer was wrong," wrote Heracleitus of Ephesus. "Homer was wrong in saying: 'Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!' He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away." These are the words on which the superhumanists should meditate. Aspiring toward a consistent perfection, they are aspiring toward annihilation. The Hindus had the wit to see and the courage to proclaim the fact; Nirvana, the goal of their striving, is nothingness. Wherever life exists, there also is inconsistency, division, strife. — Aldous Huxley

As we're about to see, by striving for even greater genetic perfection we might be eliminating a lot more than just millions of people who don't fit the societal norms we've created. We might actually be eradicating the very solutions to the medical problems we're working so hard to solve. — Sharon Moalem

You and many outstanding inventors and writers have striven for the ideal and have thereby helped yourself do remarkably well. REBT, therefore, does not oppose competition or striving for outstanding achievement. It advocates task-perfection, not self-perfection." "What does that mean?" "It means that you can try to be as good, or even as perfect, as you can - at any project or task. You can try to make it ideal. But you are not a good person if it is perfect. You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so." "How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?" "You don't! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly - never a bad person. — Albert Ellis

Nowadays the world is becoming increasingly materialistic, and mankind is reaching toward the very zenith of external progress, driven by an insatiable desire for power and vast possessions. Yet by this vain striving for perfection in a world where everything is relative,they wander even further away from inward peace and happiness of the mind. — Dalai Lama

Striving for perfection can get in the way during the early stages of the creative process. — David Kelley

I believe in a world where mothers are not expected to shed any physical evidence of their child-bearing experience. In that same world I believe there is space for exercise to be as much a gift to your brain as it is your body. I don't want to waste my time striving for some subjective definition of perfection. I'd rather rebuild my strength while dancing my ass off ... literally . — Olivia Wilde

None of us have reached the peak of perfection, but it shouldn't stop anyone from trying to make the climb. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony. — Edward Abbey

That is what great athletes can do: they give us a model of striving for human perfection. — Armstrong Williams

In less than 70 hours, three astronauts will be launched on the flight of Apollo 8 from the Cape Kennedy Space Center on a research journey to circle the moon. This will involve known risks of great magnitude and probable risks which have not been foreseen. Apollo 8 has 5,600,000 parts and 1.5 million systems, subsystems and assemblies. With 99.9 percent reliability, we could expect 5,600 defects. Hence the striving for perfection and the use of redundancy which characterize the Apollo program. — Jerome F. Lederer

Consciously or unconsciously, we are all striving for perfection. Every being must attain to it. — Swami Vivekananda

Feminism wasn't supposed to make us miserable. It was supposed to make us free; to give women the power to shape their fortunes and work for a more just world. Today, women have choices that their grandmothers could not have imagined. The challenge lies in recognizing that having choices carries the responsibility to make them wisely, striving not for perfection or the ephemeral all, but for lives and loves that matter. — Debora Spar

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. — Harriet B. Braiker

Grain is life, there's all this striving for perfection with digital stuff. Striving is fine, but getting there is not great. I want a sense of the human and that is what breathes life into a picture. For me, imperfection is perfection. — Anton Corbijn

I probably do have an obsessive personality, but striving for perfection has served me well. — Tom Ford

Perfection is impossibility but striving for perfection is not. Do the best you can. That is what counts. — John Wooden