It's the ultimate for me not to see how it's made. I find it vulgar when you can distinguish how something is made. I used to be a student at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris, and once I got to go to a Saint Laurent couture show. Everyone was always talking about how fabulous the tailoring was, but I was transfixed by this one particular dress. It was just a piece of fabric, but as the model was walking, you didn't know how she got into it, how it closed, where the seams were, and that, for me, was perfection. It stayed with me as a lifelong vision.
The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
Perfection itself is imperfection.
In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.
Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
People may be in awe of perfection, but they warm to humanity.
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.
I don't believe in perfection. I don't think there is such a thing. But the energy of wanting things to be great is a perfectionist energy.
Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even get the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. . . we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.
The goodness of a thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it serves. Now that use is either particular or universal.
The price that must be paid for mastery is discipline. No one achieves lasting success without it. So from the moment you awake each day, devote yourself to the perfection of whatever you pursue. Do this and you will achieve self-mastery. Achieve self-mastery and you will have the makings of a great leader. . . Discipline is all about cultivating powerful habits that become part of your lifestyle.
Don't think you are unstoppable or foolproof. Don't think that the only way your business will work is through perfection. Don't aim for perfection. Aim for success.
The secret is to make sure the business is running to perfection, with or without me.
There's no use being satisfied when things are done wrongly. I want perfection.
If there is a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of humanity toward perfection.
I think seeking perfection in human affairs is a perfect way to destroy them.
The perfectionist is another name for someone who is getting ready to become mad.
. . . Remember in the beginning God created heaven and earth and all that was created was good so that anything that isn't good has come about because of your belief of mind that you are separate from this divinity. You are not what you have. You are not what you do. You are not what others think of you. You are beloved. You are divine. You are a creation that is made into perfection.
[The works of Archimedes] are without exception, monuments of mathematical exposition; the gradual revelation of the plan of attack, the masterly ordering of the propositions, the stern elimination of everything not immediately relevant to the purpose, the finish of the whole, are so impressive in their perfection as to create a feeling akin to awe in the mind of the reader.
Don't expect me to be perfect. Despite all my lives, I'm still only human. I can't deliver perfection, and I'll only disappoint you. But I want you to know that you are the most important person to me. I'm trying to protect you. Sometimes I screw things up. I may even tell a white lie every now and then. But you have to give me the benefit of the doubt.