Quotes About Excellence

We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired by glory

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

If a man aspires to the highest place, it is no dishonor to him to halt at the second, or even at the third.

No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.

There is no glory in otustripping donkeys.

Most of us will never do great things. But we can do small things in a great way.

It's not a contest. At least, it's not a good contest.

Who would be a goody that could be a genius?

The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Don't ever, ever, believe anyone who tells you that you can just get by, by doing the easiest thing possible. Because there's always somebody behind you who really wants to do what you're doing. And they're going to work harder than you if you're not working hard.

He feared snakes, and tamed Pharaoh's rat, the rust- backed mongoose. No bust of it was made, but there was pleasure for the rat. Its restlessness was its excellence; it was praised for its wit; and the jerboa, like it, a small desert rat, and not famous, that lives without water, has happiness.

Mediocrity is a path cleared by fear, leveled by apathy and paved by comfort.

It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.

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

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.

You don't have to look far to taste some of the best food the world has to offer. I'd pit my grandmother against a 3-star Michelin chef any day.

The study of what is excellent is food for the mind and body.

France must be an example to the world in the quality of its food, starting with its children.

It has always stood for f***ing great food.

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

As we all learned from the sorry experience of state-sanctioned bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, decentralization in education is crucial to both freedom and excellence.

Limitation of means is a precondition of excellence. Creative freedom chooses its limitations. Destructive freedom rejects them heedlessly.