The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.
Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.
Resolve to make each day the very best and don't let anyone get in your way. If they do, step on them.
It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.
People who produce good results feel good about themselves.
All you owe the public is a good performance.
Do your work; not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishing's sake -- that little more which is worth all the rest.
A racehorse that consistently runs just a second faster than another horse is worth millions of dollars more. Be willing to give that extra effort that separates the winner from the one in second place.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.
One of the most essential things you need to do for yourself is to choose a goal that is important to you. Perfection does not exist -- you can always do better and you can always grow.
From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.
Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
I can do small things in a great way.
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
There seems to be one quality of mind which seems to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed.
It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.
I start where the last man left off.
There's a way to do better... find it.
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
There is always a best way of doing everything.
He who has put a good finish to his undertaking is said to have placed a golden crown to the whole.
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.
Good enough never is.
I use nothing but the best ingredients. My cookies are always baked fresh. I price cookies so that you cannot make them at home for any less. And I still give cookies away.
You get the best out of others when you get the best out of yourself.
If something is exceptionally well done it has embedded in it's very existence the aim of lifting the common denominator rather than catering to it.
If I play my best, I can win anywhere in the world against anybody.
The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them, and then make our plans with confidence.
The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.
You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.
Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
The fact is, the difference between peak performers and everybody else are much smaller than everybody else thinks.
Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.
The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.
The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.
Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.
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.
You're probably not a member of a major league baseball team, your errors, unless they are truly spectacular, don't show up in the morning paper.
There is none who cannot teach somebody something, and there is none so excellent but he is excelled.
Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.
One shining quality lends a luster to another, or hides some glaring defect.
There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.
It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.
Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steer is the way to it.
— Hesiod
You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.
You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.
The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they're expected to do -- they always reach.
The noblest search is the search for excellence.
We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.
The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.
Anybody who accepts mediocrity -- in school, on the job, in life -- is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises.
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.
When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.
There is a canyon of difference between doing your best to glorify God and doing whatever it takes to glorify yourself. The quest for excellence is a mark of maturity. The quest for power is childish.
You always have to give 100 percent, because if you don't, someone, someplace, will give 100 percent and will beat you when you meet.
It isn't by size that you win or fail -- be the best of whatever you are.
Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
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.
One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempts to the best of one's ability. There is a special sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in its parts, which the superficial person who leaves his or her work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition, can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns any work into art. The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement.
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!
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.
I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
It is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan. It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that makes the master's fame.
Doing common things uncommonly well.
Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hall-mark of excellence.
It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.
There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority...
Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened.
There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands.
The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.
Superiority -- doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.
Put the uncommon effort into the common task... make it large by doing it in a great way.
People who have accomplished work worthwhile have had a very high sense of the way to do things. They have not been content with mediocrity. They have not confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others so them, but always a little better. They always pushed things that came to their hands a little higher up, this little farther on, that counts in the quality of life's work. It is constant effort to be first-class in everything one attempts that conquers the heights of excellence.
Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark...
To do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way; to do some things better than they were ever done before; to eliminate errors; to know both sides of the question; to be courteous; to be an example; to work for the love of work; to anticipate requirements; to develop resources; to recognize no impediments; to master circumstances; to act from reason rather than rule; to be satisfied with nothing short of perfection.
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
To enjoy enduring success we should travel a little in advance of the world.
Become all that you are capable of becoming!
If we want to make something really superb on this planet, there is nothing whatever that can stop us.
Do a little bit more than average and from that point on our progress multiplies itself out of all proportion to the effort put in.
The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.
There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.
Determine to become one of the best. Sufficient money will almost automatically follow if you get to be one of the best in your chosen field, whatever it is.
People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it.
To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.
There is no finish line.
I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.
Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.
Don't waste your time striving for perfection, instead, strive for excellence -- doing your best.
People come out to see you perform and you've got to give them the best you have within you. The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
Excellent firms don't believe in excellence -- only in constant improvement and constant change.
Great men are little men expanded; great lives are ordinary lives intensified.
No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things.
You must be resolutely determined that whatever you do shall always be the best of which you are capable.
The uncommon man is merely the common man thinking and dreaming of success in larger terms and in more fruitful areas.
Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Our goal, simply stated, is to be the best.
If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.
Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.
I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.
Do more than you're supposed to do and you can have or be or do anything you want.
All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.
The success combination in business is: Do what you do better... and: Do more of what you do...
When you say you'll meet someone at 11:00 AM, be there at 10:45. When you promise a check on the 30th, send it on the 28th. Whatever you agree to do, do it a bit more. Start with your employees, then extend it to everyone you deal with. News will soon get around that you are a person of your word.
There never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to resolute self-denial.
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
— Seneca
Then to Silvia let us sing that Silvia is excelling. She excels each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling.
When workmen strive to do better than well, they do confound their skill in covetousness.
We must do the best we can with what we have.
True greatness consists in being great in little things.
To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.
You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.
There is no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls.
I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest. I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have.
Excellence is best described as doing the right things right -- selecting the most important things to be done and then accomplishing them 100% correctly.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can reach. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries and predecessors; try to be better than yourself.
Let each day be your masterpiece.
Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.
The road to excellence is always under construction
Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more.
The best is the enemy of the good.
— Voltaire
Winners have the ability to step back from the canvas of their lives like an artist gaining perspective. They make their lives a work of art -- an individual masterpiece.
The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval.
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.
If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.
I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism and sexism.
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
It isn't what you do, but how you do it.
A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.
The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before.