Quotes About Excellence

Perfectionism is the counterfeit of excellence. Excellence is Kingdom, while perfectionism is religion. What ever you do, do it with all you might, and as unto the Lord. That is excellence.

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.

There is definitely a connection between finding your passion and reaching your potential. People ask me all the time, 'John, how do I know what I am meant to do in life?' The answer is really simple: Energy and Excellence. When you experience unbounded energy in what you are doing, when you are driven to excellence in your work and love what you do - then you can rest assured that you have found your passion and are definitely in pursuit of your full potential.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

You have excellence on the inside. It’s who you are. Now do your part. Bring out your excellence!

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Many people can reach for and achieve excellence. To do this consistently is what separates masters and geniuses from everyone else.

Great teachers and schools expect and nurture quality work and quality performance. Great teachers inspire and demand quality, ever urging their students to higher levels of excellence. They shun mere conformity and expect their students to think and perform to their ever-increasing potential.

When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.

There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.

The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.

Ancient history, besides the still unequalled excellence of the writers, is the best instrument for cultivating the historical sense.

Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded.

Excellence is my presence. Never tense, never hesitant.

We become new if we let ourselves be grasped and shaped by the new Man, Jesus Christ. He is the new Man par excellence. In him the new human existence became reality and we can truly become new if we deliver ourselves into his hands and let ourselves be moulded by him.

The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties. This exercise must occupy a complete lifetime. One swallow does make a spring, nor does one fine day. Excellence is a habit, not an event.

Lack of respect for the worker. This nourishes disconnection, fear, anger, phoniness, and all the bad stuff that impedes excellence.

Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

Don’t tolerate any form of average. Don’t accept Dis-excellence. Don’t stand for mediocre. If you’re going to settle, then please settle for the absolute best.

To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.

There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?

I think that's the coolest thing about our fans, they not only respect, but they demand, excellence from our guys.

Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.

Beyoncé means so much to me. Throughout my transition, Beyoncé has been there as a style icon, an example of excellence, of beauty, of vulnerability. She's shared so much of herself, and it's inspiring.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit

It is not quite true that there are no good letters written in America: among my own circle of correspondents there, there are ladies and gentlemen whose letters would stand a comparison with any for frankness, grace, and epistolary beauty of every kind. But I am not aware of any medium between this excellence and the boarding-school insignificance which characterizes the rest.

Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.

I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.

That said, there are a few clear factors that determine the potential of a university to reach the highest levels of excellence. In the case of Harvard University, it was true that by the time of its tercentenary (300th anniversary of its founding) in 1936, Harvard had already achieved a reputation as a world-class institution. Harvard did not have the stature that it does today.

Excellence calls for character . . . integrity . . . fairness . . . honesty . . . a determination to do what's right. High ethical standards, across the board.

To hate excellence is to hate the gods.

Chastity is the lily of virtues, and makes men almost equal to Angels. Everything is beautiful in accordance with its purity. Now the purity of man is chastity, which is called honesty, and the observance of it, honor and also integrity; and its contrary is called corruption; in short, it has this peculiar excellence above the other virtues, that it preserves both soul and body fair and unspotted.

The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.

The media and their journalists are merely megaphones for stupidity, the verb par excellence.

The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.

Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection.

There is no excellence uncoupled with difficulties.

Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

Relentlessly pursue perfection knowing we won't catch it, but in the process we'll achieve excellence.

Excellence isn't achieved without inspiration and perspiration. You've got to have both.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Love is the source of our greatest errors; but when it is even partially refined it is the energy and the passion of the soul in its search for Good, the force that joins us to Good and joins us to the world through Good. Its existence is the unmistakable sign that we are spiritual creatures, attracted by excellence and made for the Good. It is a reflection of the warmth and light of the sun.

What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.

People think I'm into positive thinking. I'm not a positive thinking guy. I'm into the truth. I'm a hunter of human excellence.