Excellence Quotes - Page 19

• Difficult, say you? Difficult to be a man of virtue, truly good, shaped and fashioned without flaw in the perfect figure of four-squared excellence, in body and mind, in act and thought?

  Simonides of Ceos

  Men, Perfect, Mind

  "The Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles". 429 BC.

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• Certainly, envy is no monopoly of the poor; it makes itself felt in all sections of society; it haunts the court, the library, the barrack-room, even the sanctuary; it is provoked in some unhappy souls by the near neighbourhood of any superior rank or excellence whatever.

  Henry Parry Liddon

  Envy, Soul, Unhappy

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• Education no longer stops on graduation day. We must demand excellence at every level of education.

  William J. Clinton

  Levels, Demand, Graduation Day

  Clinton, William J. (1997). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995”, p.1411, Best Books on

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• Jewish success is due to a culture that promotes excellence, blessed with self discipline, education, dedication and a quest for leaving this world a better place.

  Nonie Darwish

  Blessed, Dedication, Self

  Address at the Feat of Tabernacles convention, Jerusalem, 2007.

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• Happiness is the possession of the excellence proper to us, and of the power subservient to it.

  Xenocrates

  Possession, Subservient

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• Education, they [philosophers] felt, is the only answer to the always pressing question, to the political question par excellence, of how to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom which is not license.

  Leo Strauss

  Order, Political, Answers

  Leo Strauss (2013). “Persecution and the Art of Writing”, p.37, University of Chicago Press

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• One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once, life would collapse. There are simply no definitive answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

  Barry Lopez

  Light, Expression, Answers

  "In 'Sliver Of Sky,' Barry Lopez Confronts Childhood Sexual Abuse". 'Fresh Air' with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. January 10, 2013.

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• It is important that voters be as informed as possible when they enter the polls May 9 to determine who has the experience, integrity and vision to lead Nebraska to excellence.

  Tom Osborne

  Integrity, Vision, Important

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• The lesbian is the archtypical feminist, because she's not into men - she's the independent woman par excellence.

  Kate Millett

  Sex, Independent, Men

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• The educational process should not be one of homogenizing. It should be one of encouraging excellence... when we fail to make financial aid depend upon performance, we eliminate the incentive to excellence.

  John H. Sununu

  Education, Incentives, Financial

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• It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Destiny, Numbers

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.162, Routledge

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• People in theatre work harder than anyone in the world - as far as I'm concerned - as far as sheer output of energy and the rigor and excellence that they maintain doing something every day, or twice a day.

  Jennifer Westfeldt

  Hard Work, People, Theatre

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• Excellence isn't about meeting the spec, it's about setting the spec.

  Seth Godin

  Specs, Meetings, Settings

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• I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

  Charlie Trotter

  Kind, Perfectionist, Deviation

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• A woman who places a high priority on performance and excellence is seen as imperial. A man is seen as demanding and tough.

  Faye Wattleton

  Men, Priorities, Tough

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• I know most of the black players who preceded and followed me at Duke. They all contribute to our tradition of excellence on the court.

  Grant Hill

  Player, Black, Dukes

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• Perfection. Excellence. What a passionate lover. But once having tasted the lips of excellence, once having given oneself to its perfection, how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable, the just okay and not a stroke better.

  Harlan Ellison

  Perfection, Waking, Lips

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• Average is the enemy of excellence, and average commitment will prevent you from enduring to the end.

  Kevin W. Pearson

  Commitment, Enduring To The End, Average

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• That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  What Matters, Accomplish, Something Better

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• The higher its type, the more rarely a thing succeeds.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Success, Succeed, Type

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.246, Penguin

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• A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Strength, Wise, Hope

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.38, BookRix

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• Consider the problem from the point of view of evil, evil being almost always pleasure's true and major charm; considered thus, the crime must appear greater when perpetrated upon a being of your identical sort than when inflicted upon one which is not, and this once established, the delight automatically doubles.

  Marquis de Sade

  Truth, Honesty, Light

  Marquis de Sade (2013). “120 Days of Sodom”, p.245, Simon and Schuster

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• The most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: Those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection, mere buoys that float on the waves.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Adversity, Men, Class

  "The Revolt of the Masses". Book by José Ortega y Gasset, p. 15, 1929.

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• Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast
  each with a splendor
  which man in all his vileness cannot
  set aside; each with an excellence!

  Marianne Moore

  Moon, Night, Men

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.118, Penguin

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• Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man.

  Plato

  Death, Men, Upright Man

  Phaedo 118a

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