Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on perfection.
“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.” – Winston Churchill
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi
“Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.” – William Ellery Channing
“Great sculptors and artists spend countless hours perfecting their talents. They don’t pick up a chisel or a brush and palette, expecting immediate perfection. They understand that they will make many errors as they learn, but they start with the basics, the key fundamentals first.” – Joseph B. Wirthlin
“Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.” – Martha Graham
“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.” – Voltaire
“Perfection is the child of time.” – Joseph Hall
“Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.” – Owen Feltham
“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection.” – Oscar Wilde
“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.” – J. D. Salinger
“When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.” – Agnes Martin
“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” – Michelangelo
“The perfection of art is to conceal art.” – Quintilian
“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.” – Gustave Flaubert
“The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.” – Eugene Delacroix
“When you aim for perfection, you discover it’s a moving target.” – George Fisher
“The greater the emphasis on perfection, the further it recedes” – Haridas Chaudhuri
“Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.” – Michelangelo
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.” – Chinese proverb
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.” – Albrecht Durer
“Everything is perfect in the universe – even your desire to improve it.” – Wayne Dyer
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” – Aristotle
“But quality of work can be expected only through personal satisfaction, dedication and enjoyment. In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensable luxury, but a simple necessity.” – Niklaus Wirth
“Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.” – Louis Auchincloss
“Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.” – W. Somerset Maugham
“A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place.” – Dave Grohl
“Perfect is the enemy of the good.” – Voltaire
“Perfection is terrible; it cannot have children.” – Sylvia Plath
“If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” ― Leo Tolstoy
“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” – Salvador Dali
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” — Confucius
“The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.” – Saint Augustine
“Perfection itself is imperfection.” – Vladimir Horowitz
“The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.” – Herman Hesse
“If everything is imperfect in this imperfect world, love is most perfect in its perfect imperfection.” – Gunnar Björnstrand
“True love does not come by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” – Jason Jordan
“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” – Anna Quindlen
“Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection.” – Kim Collins
“Now that you’ve stopped being perfect you can be good.” – John Steinbeck
Read more in my Essential List Of Creativity Quotes.