Quotes About Excellence

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

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

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

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

I think education is power. I think that being able to communicate with people is power. One of my main goals on the planet is to encourage people to empower themselves." Another "I was raised to believe that excellence is the deterrent to racism and sexism. And that's how I operate my life." And another "It does not matter who you are or where you came from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.

When you have a spirit of excellence, you do the right thing not because somebody is watching or making you do it; you do it because it's the right thing to do.

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.

When you begin moving toward excellence, you will find very little competition. You're competing with only 20% of the population.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

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

Usually I object when someone makes over-much of men's work versus women's work, for I think it is the excellence of the results which counts.

As I see it, the greatest responsibility of motherhood is to make sure that our children know that there are principles of kindness, compassion, integrity, excellence, and discipline.

When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit.

Physical Fitness is the basis for all other forms of excellence.

The only way we can develop muscle is through regular exercise. As soon as we stop stretching and working toward higher ethics, our standards start to sag. The muscle gets soft, and instead of excellence we have to settle for mediocrity. Maybe something even worse.

The piano is the social instrument par excellence... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment.

I want to explore and do things with excellence. I want to write songs that resonate with me and will resonate with a live audience. I'm exploring fresh sounds.

Once you decide that mediocrity is unthinkable, your only choices are excellence and quitting.

Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.

There are many aspects about what and why we photograph: visual pleasure, personal empathy, intellectual stimulation, technical excellence, etc. Serious photographers and artists will try to create works that are original. Over a career period they may develop a singular identity in their images.

You can get people the qualifications; But you can't teach them the qualities they're going to need. You can't teach integrity, a drive for excellence, refusal to quit under pressure. It's too late to build that into people you're going to hire.

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

Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.

I was one of two first cultural exchange artists been allowed to go to the West. I knew it was such a rare opportunity and I had to treasure it by giving my utter most to achieve excellence.

If you're studying for an exam you're not thinking about the results. If you're always worried about the results, you can't study a lot. So to be engaged and detached from the outcome is excellent. Excellence is behavior. I mean, isn't that what martial arts is about? And that's what meditation is about, that's what, in many ways, sports are about.

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it.

Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives.

The education of attention would be an education par excellence

A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland.

In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them.

When Americans decry our politicians, we must remember that ultimately, politicians reflect us. When we demand more than mediocrity - and the passing comforts it bestows - we will certainly attain it. One hopes and prays it doesn't take an historic crisis for us to demand and reward excellence in public service.

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

The pursuit of excellence is the proper vocation of man.

Live according to the ethics of excellence, and you can always stand proud. Pride - not vanity, but dignity and self-respect - should carry a lot of weight in helping you make decisions. Let pride help you decide.

To put it simply, we need to keep the arts in education because they instill in students the habits of mind that last a lifetime: critical analysis skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity and to solve problems, perseverance and a drive for excellence. Moreover, the creative skills children develop through the arts carry them toward new ideas, new experiences, and new challenges, not to mention personal satisfaction. This is the intrinsic value of the arts, and it cannot be overestimated.

Beyoncé says it was Mathew Knowles, her father, who made her understand discipline and work ethic, what it means to come in early before class starts to stretch, or to work on your dégagés or your pirouettes or whatever it was. I was a turner! So to come in early and then to stay afterward and to just soak up everything that the teacher has, that's really what it's about - the striving for excellence.

No student ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him: it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required, that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction.

But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [her] sincerity became less necessary.

A serious athlete to me is one who is committed to excellence at any level, at any age, in any endeavor and in either sex. This commitment begins with a dream and a sense of talent and skill and determination to make that dream come true.

Barack the boy was raised by his white maternal grandparents; his Kenyan father abandoned him. The qualities Americans appeared to find universally appealing in the ambitious, affable Obama - his confidence and calm, and his commitment to community and kin, education and excellence - these came from Kansas, not Kenya.

Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.

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.

Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.

Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.

Even to a wicked man a divinity gives wealth, Cyrnus, but to few men comes the gift of excellence.

Not for a million - years. I mean, I like the INXS boys, but I found the process very degrading, really. Reality television has eaten away at our standards of excellence. I don't like this whole culture, which has evolved, of TV being the king.

Moral excellence is the bright consummate flower of all progress.