Quotes About Excellence

The genius who bemoans and laments himself forgets that he has spared himself the misfortune of mediocrity.

Someone who has been defeated should not console himself with the possible retaliations of history, but with the patent excellence of his cause.

A limited population produces fewer ordinary intelligences than a numerous population, but it can produce an equal or greater number of talents. Great demographic densities are the breeding grounds of mediocrity.

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.

An interesting argument is that actually 'the best service is no service 'because if you get things right in the first place, customers do not want your service.

There's no question 'Amazing Race' is a beautifully produced show.

Oh long-drawn highway, how excellent you are! How often have I in weariness and despondency set forth upon your length, and found in you salvation and rest! How often, as I followed your leading, have I been visited with wonderful thoughts and poetic dreams and curious, wild impressions!

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.

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

What I adore is supreme professionalism. I'm bored by writers who can write only when it's raining.

There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.

The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such.

The only certain means is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.

Today, and every day, deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable. Exercise your privilege to go the extra mile, and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them!

Never neglect the little things. Never skimp on that extra effort, that additional few minutes, that soft word of praise or thanks, that delivery of the very best that you can do. It does not matter what others think, it is of prime importance, however, what you think about you. You can never do your best, which should always be your trademark, if you are cutting corners and shirking responsibilities. You are special. Act it. Never neglect the little things.

I determine to render more and better service, each day, than I am being paid to render. Those that reach the top are the ones who are not content with doing only what is required of them.

The story of your species is indeed a tragic story, for it closes with desolation. Your part in that story is both to strive and to fail in a unique opportunity, and so to set the current of history toward disaster. But think not therefore that your species has occurred in vain, or that your own individual lives are futile. Whatever any of you has achieved of good is an excellence in itself, and a bright thread woven into the texture of the cosmos.

To aim at erxcellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.

To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.

The very pink of perfection.

There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence, that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.

Now, therefore, I began to associate with none but disappointed authors like myself, who praised, deplored, and despised each other. The satisfaction we found in every celebrated writer's attempts was inversely as their merits. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort. I could neither read nor write with satisfaction; for excellence in another was my aversion, and writing was my trade.

I won't accept anything less than the best a player's capable of doing... and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!

In war there is no second prize for the runner-up.