Perfection Quotes - Page 32

• Few have attained to consummate wisdom in the perfection of philosophy: Solomon attained to it, and Aristotle in relation to his times, and in a later age Avicenna, and in our own days the recently deceased Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, and Adam Marsh.

  Roger Bacon

  Philosophy, Age, Bishops

  "Opus Tertium" by Roger Bacon, (p. 70), (c. 1267).

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• What I'm doing right now, I'm chasing perfection... and if I don't get it, I'm going to get this close.

  Kobe Bryant

  Chasing, Right Now, Ifs

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• It seemed to me that I now saw the Star Maker in two aspects: as the spirit's particular creative mood that had given rise to me, the cosmos; and also, most dreadfully, as something incomparably greater than creativity, namely as the eternally achieved perfection of the absolute spirit. Barren, barren and trivial are these words. But not barren the experience.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Stars, Creativity, Two

  "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon, Dover Books, (p. 161), 1937.

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• The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect.

  George Sarton

  Vanity, Creative, Greek

  George Sarton (1952). “Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• 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

  Father, Spring, Men

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• I do not like the Broadway theatre because it does not know how to say hello. The tone of voice is false, the mannerisms are false, the sex is false, ideal, the Hollywood world of perfection, the clean image, the well pressed clothes, the well scrubbed anus, odorless, inhuman, of the Hollywood actor, the Broadway star. And the terrible false dirt of Broadway, the lower depths in which the dirt is imitated, inaccurate.

  Julian Beck

  Sex, Stars, Broadway Theatre

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• Natural Magick is taken to be nothing else, but the chief power of all the natural Sciences; which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy, and which is indeed the active part of the same; which by the assistance of natural forces and faculties, through their mutual & opportune application, performs those things that are above Human Reason.

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

  Philosophy, Taken, Reason

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1676). “The Vanity of Arts and Sciences”, p.110

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• When I kicked in the first TV – a nineteen-inch Magnavox with wicker speaker panels – it felt like the most perfect thing I had done in a long time. And there's nothing like the feeling of perfection that will inspire repeated behavior.

  Adam Rapp

  Long, Inspire, Feelings

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• I feel that I was made to complete things. To accomplish only a mass of beginnings and attempts would be to make a total failure of life. Perfection is the heritage with which my Creator has endowed me, and since this short life does not give completeness, I must have immortal life in which to find it.

  Randolph Sinks Foster

  Short Life, Giving, Doe

  Randolph Sinks Foster (1870). “Beyond the Grave: Being Three Lectures Before Chautauqua Assembly in 1878, with Papers on Recognition in the Future State, and Other Addenda”, p.92

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• It is the profoundest of cosmic ironies. The divine power, our true spiritual essence, does not achieve perfection until it hits the 'rock' bottom of the cosmos - the dense and crude earth. It remains imperfect until the moment of entombment for the simple reason that until that dark nadir is reached the experiential adventure of existence remains incomplete, and Self is not yet endowed with the entire spectrum of the light of consciousness - from spirit to matter - from the highest high to the lowest low.

  Lon Milo DuQuette

  Spiritual, Adventure, Dark

  Jason Augustus Newcomb, Lon Milo Duquette (2004). “The New Hermetics: 21st Century Magick for Illumination and Power”, p.14, Weiser Books

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• We should know that Allah has created us to live an eternal life with no death, a life of pride and ease with no humiliation, a life of security with no fear, a life of richness with no poverty, a life of joy with no pain, a life of perfection with no flaws. Allah is testing us in this world with a life that will end in death, a life of pride that is accompanied by humiliation and degradation, a life that is tainted by fear, where joy and ease are mixed with sorrow and pain.

  Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

  Pain, Pride, Joy

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• The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order.

  Richard Rohr

  Order, Joy, Enemy

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• Perfection does not exist. It's more important to be happy with the human being you are.

  Talisa Soto

  Important, Doe, Humans

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• Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.

  Jonathan Swift

  Simplicity, Style, Performances

  Jonathan Swift (1861). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions”, p.310

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• Abstaining so as really to enjoy, is the epicurism, the very perfection, of reason.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Abstinence, Reason, Abstaining

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• Happiness is no other than soundness and perfection of mind.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Happiness, Mind, Soundness

  Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome), James Thomson (gent.) (1766). “The Commentaries of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus. Translated from the Greek, by Mr. Thomson”, p.99

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• In art them is a point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature; he who is able to perceive it, and who loves it, has perfect taste; he who does not feel it, or loves on this side or that, has an imperfect taste.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Art, Maturity, Perfect

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• The best painters, as they progress in reputation and towards perfection, are found to dispense more and more with the technique of the art, for simpler methods. Simplicity never fails to charm.

  Honore de Balzac

  Art, Simplicity, Progress

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• Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Gold, Wish

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.113

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• Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Happiness, Christian, Son

  Frederick William Robertson (1858). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton: Third Series”, p.177

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• Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.

  Joseph Addison

  Ornaments, Charity

  Joseph Addison, Henry George Bohn, Richard Hurd (1877). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.35

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• How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?

  Joseph Addison

  Fall, Men, Soul

  Joseph Addison (1842). “The Works of Joseph Addison”, p.171

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• 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

  God, Discovery, Mind

  Joseph Addison (1872). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.359

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• The moral perfections of the Deity, the more attentively, we consider, the more perfectly still shall we know them.

  Joseph Addison

  God, Deities, Moral

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• Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

  George Orwell

  Moving, Men, Thinking

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

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