Perfect Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Whereas in Arithmetic Questions are only resolved by proceeding from given Quantities to the Quantities sought, Algebra proceeds in a retrograde Order, from the Quantities sought as if they were given, to the Quantities given as if they were sought, to the End that we may some Way or other come to a Conclusion or equation, from which one may bring out the Quantity sought. And after this Way the most difficult problems are resolved, the Resolutions whereof would be sought in vain from only common Arithmetic. Yet Arithmetic in all its Operations is so subservient to Algebra, as that they seem both but to make one perfect Science of Computing; and therefore I will explain them both together.

A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject; must show it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to recommend it.... That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short episode.

I have repeatedly stated that satyagraha never fails and that one perfect satyagrahi is enough to vindicate Truth.

And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun thru the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and all returned again to nebula... "Yes," he murmured, "it was a good play; I will have it performed again."

Bertrand Russell

As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.

Vincent van Gogh

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

And Levin, a happy father and a man in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the cord, lest he be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun, for fear of shooting himself. But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living.

Mrs. Cole was a perfect democrat. She hated all kids equally.

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost. Life would split asunder without them. 'Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is wonderful; the Russian dancers....' These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

G. K. Chesterton

Perfect solutions of our difficulties are not to be looked for in an imperfect world.

Winston Churchill

The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat — cut it.

Alfred Hitchcock

It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.

There was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her.

The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.

If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come. It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe. If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well, the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness....

The blackbird is a perfect gentleman, in deportment and attire, and is not noisy, I believe, except when holding religious services and political conventions in a tree.

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The black man in North America was economically sick and that was evident in one simple fact: as a consumer, he got less than his share, and as a producer gave least. The black American today shows us the perfect parasite image - the black tick under the delusion that he is progressing because he rides on the udder of the fat, three-stomached cow that is white America.

To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

No one can write perfect English and keep it up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done.