Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.
Goethe
No one is perfect… that’s why pencils have erasers.
Nothing that is complete breathes.
Antonio Porchia
Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it
William Ellery Channing
Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.
John Henry Newman
To escape criticism – do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard
Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
William Safire
The greater the emphasis on perfection, the further it recedes.
Haridas Chaudhuri
Gold cannot be pure, and people cannot be perfect.
Chinese Proverb
Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.
Salvador Dali
Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
Henry van Dyke
Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
Carl Schurz
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.
Confucius
When you aim for perfection, you discover it’s a moving target.
George Fisher
Once you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence.
Rosalynn Carter
Sometimes… when you hold out for everything, you walk away with nothing.
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
Anna Quindlen
Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.
Salvador Dalí
There are no perfect men in this world, only perfect intentions.
Pen Densham
Does “anal-retentive” have a hyphen?
Alison Bechdel
The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can’t separate them. They’re wedded.
Henry Miller
Always live up to your standards – by lowering them, if necessary.
Mignon McLaughlin
The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.
Winston Churchill
The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.
Stanley J. Randall
Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished.
Chinese Proverbs
They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.
Wilt Chamberlain
A good garden may have some weeds.
Thomas Fuller
I just try to be the best I can be and hope that is the best ever.
I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Edgar Allan Poe
He who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition.
Charles Lamb
I find imperfection the most interesting thing about a person.
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.
Alice Walker
This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.
Saint Augustine
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.
Voltaire
There is such a thing as perfection…and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth….Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.
Richard Bach
Perfectionism is slow death”
Hugh Prather
His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.
J.R.R. Tolkien
A beautiful thing is never perfect.
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.
William Faulkner
A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections and rebukes evil is to be respected as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure.
Buddha
Even the best needles are not sharp at both ends.
Chinese Proverb
Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
Angelique Arnauld
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
Harriet Braiker
Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up.
Joseph Campbell
I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.
Martha Graham
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Matthew Arnold
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
Kurt Vonnegut
When nobody around you seems to measure up, it’s time to check your yardstick.
Bill Lemley
Living up to ideals is like doing everyday work with your Sunday clothes on.
Ed Howe
People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it.
Edith Schaeffer
Everything is perfect in the universe, even your desire to improve it.
Wayne W. Dyer
One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
Chuck Palahniuk
Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
Samuel McChord Crothers
Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.
Robert Schuller
Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.
Dr. David M. Burns
Some of us (perfectionists, especially) fuss so much over making the ‘right’ choice, but in life, all that’s really needed is to make any’ good’ choice, believe in it, go through with it, and accept the consequences.
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
William Shakespeare
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
William Faulkner
The most difficult part of attaining perfection is finding something to do for an encore.
I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.
Anatole France
Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.
William Ellery Channing
The search for perfection begins with detecting imperfection.
The Quotesjunction.com
Be intent on the perfection of the present day.
William Law
Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues.
Hugh Prather