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• Excellence: The quality of being outstanding or extremely good.  Oxford Dictionary
• Excellence: The fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Excellent: Very good of its kind: eminently good.  Merriam Webster
• Mastery,  Quality,  Expertise,  Virtue,  Greatness,  Genius

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Commit to excellence in your life in the domains that matter to you…

• Commit to being “Mozart-Level Good” at your work. Robin Sharma
• Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach. John W. Gardner
• Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. Henry David Thoreau
• Anything worth doing, is worth doing right. Hunter S. Thompson
• Whatever you do, don’t do it halfway.  Bob Beamon
• Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. Paul J. Meyer
• Be driven with purpose. Be relentless in your alignment with excellence. Pay no mind to the disimpassioned impotent haters. Steve Maraboli
• All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The quality of each man’s life is the full measure of that man’s personal commitment to excellence and to victory. Vince Lombardi
• There are countless ways of attaining greatness, but any road to reaching one’s maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity. Buck Rodgers

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… but shy away from striving for perfection

• Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.   Vince Lombardi
• Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. Harriet Braiker
• Don’t waste your time striving for perfection, instead, strive for excellence — doing your best. Sir Lawrence Olivier
• I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God’s business. Michael J. Fox
• Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process. Jerry Moran
• Focus on human excellence, not on perfection. Neil Fiore
• The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic and a terrible waste of time.  Edwin Blissbert
• The healthy pursuit of excellence, the genuine pleasure of meeting high standards, is often confused with perfectionism. Perfectionism is based on a painful illusion, the illusion of personal perfectibility, people measured entirely by production or accomplishment.  Perfectionists lose sight of the quality of life in their search for quantity.  Order ends up taking precedence over relationships.  Their expectations are more important than acceptance and love.  They can see only perfect and imperfect, so they are unable to enjoy any activity or person that would leave them in between.  Perfect performance becomes confused with perfect love.  They are never satisfied.  They never really feel safe or loved.  Recognize perfection as an illusion, not a desirable way to live.  Don’t confuse it with excellence.  Enjoy your successes, laugh at your failures and learn from them.  Relax, become less competitive and critical.  Enjoy life instead of controlling it.  Jennifer James
• Perfectionism

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Excellence is an attitude

• Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.  Ralph Marston
• We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent. Barack Obama
• The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence. Really, it’s a matter of programming our minds with the kind of information that will set us free. Charles R. Swindoll
• If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude. Colin Powell
• Professionalism is a frame of mind, not a pay check. Cecil Castle
• Attitude

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Excellence is a habit

• Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. Aristotle
• Excellence is an art won by training and habituation… We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.  Aristotle
• Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best. Marva Collins
• If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Colin Powell
• With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it. Aristotle
• Excellence is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly. Shaquille O’Neal
• Habit

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Excellence brings great rewards

• You get the best out of others when you get the best out of yourself. Harvey S.  Firestone
• Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world. George Eliot
• People who produce good results feel good about themselves. Ken Blanchard
• The quality of a man’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor. Sherman Alexie
• True happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it. Howard W. Newton
• In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like. Os Guinness
• Excellence always sells. Earl Nightingale
• Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek. Mario Andretti
• The foundation of lasting self-confidence and self-esteem is excellence, mastery of our work. Brian Tracy
• The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Benjamin Haydon

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1.  Don’t settle for mediocrity

• Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better. Gordon B. Hinckley
• Good enough never is. Debbi Field
• 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. John W. Gardner
• Don’t accept “good enough” as good enough. Jackson Brown Jr.
• It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us. Isaac Disraeli
• Doing what is expected is boring. Go beyond mediocre and aim toward excellence! Natasha Vanderlinden
• Some people insist that ‘mediocre’ is better than ‘best.’ They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can’t fly. They despise brains because they have none. Robert A. Heinlein
• Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. As long as you stick to good, you’ll never have real growth. Bruce Mau
• Mediocre men work at their best; men seeking excellence strive to do better. Edwin Louis Cole
• It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity. Peter Drucker
• Perfection, fortunately, is not the only alternative to mediocrity. A more sensible alternative is excellence. Striving for excellence is stimulating and rewarding; striving for perfection–in practically anything–is both neurotic and futile. Edwin Bliss
• Leave everything you touch better than you find it. Surround yourself with excellent people. Use excellent words. Drink excellent coffee. Read excellent books. Wear excellent shoes. Create excellent projects. Be an excellent parent. Think excellent thoughts. You deserve no less. Robin Sharma

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2.  Pay attention to the details and the small things

• Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come. Perry Paxton
• True greatness consists in being great in little things. Charles Simmons
• The excellence is in the details. Gregory L. Sullivan
• The way we do small things determines the way that we do everything. If we execute our minor tasks well, we will also excel at our large efforts. Mastery then becomes our way of being. Robin Sharma
• Excellence in art is largely the result of attention to minutiae, and–prayer. Christian Nestell Bovee
• Life is in the little things

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3.  Do the common in an extraordinary way

• If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. Booker T. Washington
• Do ordinary things extraordinarily well. Gregg Harris
• When you do the common things in an uncommon way, you’ll command the attention of the world. George Washington Carver
• Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well. Henry David Thoreau
• It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

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4.  Always look for a way to do it better and improve your offering

• There’s a way to do better… find it. Thomas A. Edison
• If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just. Anita Roddick
• Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer. Rick Pitino
• Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. Pat Riley
• Improvement

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5.  Set high standards for yourself

• 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. Brian Tracy
• The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action. Andre Godin
• 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. Jose Ortega Y Gasset
• Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do. Jose Ortega y Gasset
• I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself. Oprah Winfrey

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6.  Try to break your own records

• Work to excel, not compete.
• The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval. Denis Waitley
• 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. Geoffrey Gaberino
• We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started. Henry Ward Beecher
• The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before. Steve Young
• If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better. Lindsay Buckingham
• Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually different and are experienced differently. Stephen Covey

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7.  Strive to be the best at what you do

• 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. Og Mandino
• 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. Don G. Mitchell
• 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. Jerry Garcia

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8.  Put in that little extra and exceed expectations

• 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. Lou Vickery
• Do more than you’re supposed to do and you can have or be or do anything you want. Bill Sands
• Put the uncommon effort into the common task… make it large by doing it in a great way. Orison Swett Marden
• 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. Jackson Brown Jr.
• The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. Jimmy Johnson
• No student ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him: it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required, that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction. Charles Kendall Adams
• The fact is, the difference between peak performers and everybody else are much smaller than everybody else thinks. Charles A. Garfield
• 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. Dean Briggs
• People of excellence go the extra mile to do what’s right. Joel Osteen

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9.  Be obsessed with quality…

• It is quality rather than quantity that matters. Seneca
• It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity. Mahatma Gandhi
• Quality begins on the inside… and then works its way out. Bob Moawad
• Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. Steve Jobs
• 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 hallmark of excellence. Orison Swett Marden
• Quality

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… far more than profit, size and growth

• The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying. David Ogilvy
• As a consequence, progress has come to mean simply more power, more profit, more productivity, more paper prosperity, all of which are convertible into standards concerned only with size or magnitude rather than quality or excellence. Alex Campbell
• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Edward Abbey

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10.  Appreciate excellence in others and learn from it

• Next to excellence is the appreciation of it. William Makepeace
• It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. Wendell Berry
• Whatever your discipline, become a student of excellence in all things. Take every opportunity to observe people who manifest the qualities of mastery. These models of excellence will inspire you and guide you toward the fulfillment of your highest potential. Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan
• By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. Voltaire
• Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary. Warren G. Bennis
• Be open to beauty and excellence. Allow yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Be open to beauty and excellence. This strategy involves allowing yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue. Strive even to feel reverence and awe. Positive psychologists suggest that people who open themselves to the beauty and excellence around them are more likely to find joy, meaning, and profound connections in their lives. Sonja Lyubomirsky

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11.  Be passionate about what you do and set goals that excite you

• Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. Aristotle
• The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. Pearl S. Buck
• Find something that you’re really interested in doing in your life. Pursue it, set goals, and commit yourself to excellence. Do the best you can. Chris Evert
• 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. Les  Brown
• If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you. Alan Armstrong
• The heart of human excellence often begins to beat when you discover a pursuit that absorbs you, frees you, challenges you, or gives you a sense of meaning, joy or passion. Terry Orlick
• Do what you love,  Passion,  Goal setting

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12.  Focus on and master your trade…

• Learn the rules before you break them. Steven Taylor Goldsberry
• If you have to do it every day, for God’s sake learn to do it well. Mignon McLaughlin
• Don’t waste time learning the “tricks of the trade.” Instead, learn the trade Jackson Brown Jr.
• Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often granted upon easier terms. Samuel Johnson
• Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of at least one field of endeavor. John Haggai
• Being well-rounded is highly over-rated. Focus on developing your true strengths.  Get better at what you’re already best at – that’s how you enter your mastery zone.  Competency is for suckers.  Danielle LaPorte
• Mastery,  Expertise

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… by being prepared to work and practice hard

• No man ever reached excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation. Horace
• Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price. Samuel Johnson
• The desire of most people today for quick, sure, and highly visible results is perhaps the deadliest enemy of mastery. George Leonard
• If you spend too much time learning the tricks of the trade, you may not learn the trade. If you’re working on finding a short cut, the easy way, you’re not working hard enough on the fundamentals. You may get away with it for a spell, but there is no substitute for the basics. And the first basic is good, old- fashioned hard work. John Wooden
• The road to excellence is aways under construction.
• How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. George Leonard
• Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant. Bayard Taylor
• Hard work,  Diligence,  Effort

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13.  Be persistent in your practice

• Mastery is not persistence when you see a light at the end of the tunnel. True mastery is persistence when you don’t yet see the light. James Arthur Ray
• In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. Henry Miller
• Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time. Habeeb Akande
• At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path. George Leonard
• Perseverance,  Determination

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14.  Focus on growing your strengths, not your weaknesses

• You grow the most, learn the most, develop the most in the areas where you already have some natural advantage. Marcus Buckingham
• Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength. Donald O. Clifton
• We will never be great at the things we have to try to be good at. But we can be amazing at the things we’re easily great at. Danielle LaPorte
• Correcting our weaknesses, the most we become is mediocre. If we hone our few super- strengths, insist on behavior that is authentic and true to our inner selves, and unreasonably demand more with less, the sky is the limit. Richard Koch
• The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Timothy Ferriss
• When we studied them, excellent performers were rarely well rounded. On the contrary, they were sharp. Donald O. Clifton
• When we think about our strengths, we are strong. When we think about our weaknesses, we are weak. Pete Cohen
• Grow your strengths, not your weaknesses

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15.  See your life as a work of art and create a masterpiece

• 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. Denis Waitley
• Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.
• There were far worse strategies in life than to try to make each aspect of one’s existence a minor work of art. Pat Conroy
• A 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. James A. Michener
• Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert. Robert Brault
• Life’s like a play; it’s not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters. Seneca
• Life is a work of art

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16.  Keep things simple

• Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Complexity is easy, simplicity requires mastery. Peter Cajander
• Simplicity

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17.  Accept who you are and find your own style

• You unlock the door to greater levels of excellence and success when you accept who you are. It is from the point of acceptance that we can create a masterful life. Steve Maraboli
• The secret is to find your own unique style and talents and bring them forth. No one has ever attained mastery by replicating another. Alen Cohen

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18.  Abandon your need for approval

• If your number one goal is to make sure that everyone likes and approves of you, then you risk sacrificing your uniqueness, and, therefore, your excellence.
• If you truly expect to realize your dreams, abandon the need for blanket approval. If conforming to everyone’s expectations is the number one goal, you have sacrificed your uniqueness, and therefore your excellence. Hope Solo
• You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate. Logan Pearsall Smith
• Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best. Andrew Carnegie
• Approval seeking

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19. Do your level best, especially in the important things

• Do your best, and be a little better than you are.  Gordon B. Hinckley
• Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. Oprah Winfrey
• Give the world the best you have, and the best will come to you. Madeline Bridge
• I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got. Walter Cronkite
• I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. Abraham Lincoln
• I have done my best. That is all the philosophy of living one needs. Lin-yutang
• 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. Woodrow T. Wilson
• 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. Orison Swett Marden
• The key ingredient to any kind of happiness or success is to never give less than your best. Russell Simmons
• There is one single thread binding my way together… the way of the Master consists in doing one’s best… that is all. Confucius
• We do not have to be the best to be effective, but we do have to be at our best. Bob Briner
• We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility. Albert Einstein
• When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. Helen Keller
• Do your best

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20.  Become a student of excellence

• Whatever your discipline, become a student of excellence in all things. Take every opportunity to observe people who manifest the qualities of mastery. These models of excellence will inspire you and guide you toward the fulfilment of your highest potential. Tony Buzan
• Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary. Warren Bennis

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More paths to excellence

• The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence. Confucius
• Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible. Ronnie Oldham
• If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less- than- excellent work. Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
• The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it. Vision will ignite the fire of passion that fuels our commitment to do whatever it takes to achieve excellence. Only vision allows us to transform dreams of greatness into the reality of achievement through human action. Vision has no boundaries and knows no limits. Our vision is what we become in life. Tony Dungy
• The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence. Eddie Robinson

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Be excellent but keep humble

• Real excellence and humility are not incompatible one with the other, on the contrary they are twin sisters. Jean Baptiste Lacordaire
• Focus on making yourself better, not on thinking that you are better. Bohdi Sanders
• A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. Confucius
• With humility, you pursue excellence, not fame. Rick Hanson
• Humility

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More thoughts

• But I think Steve’s main contribution besides just the pure leadership is his passion for excellence. He’s a perfectionist. Good enough isn’t good enough. And also his creative spirit. You know he really, really wants to do something great. Andy Hertzfeld
• Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. John W. Gardner
• There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue. Oliver Goldsmith
• To hate excellence is to hate the gods. Mary Renault
• He who has put a good finish to his undertaking is said to have placed a golden crown to the whole. Eustachius
• As Aristotle said, ‘Excellence is a habit.’ I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he’s ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial. Criss Jami
• An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. John W. Gardner
• Excellence is not a destination; it is a continuous journey that never ends. Brian Tracy
• Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change. Tom Peters
• If your number one goal is to make sure that everyone likes and approves of you, then you risk sacrificing your uniqueness and, therefore, your excellence. Edge Keynote
• The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction. Lawrence Miller
• We shouldn’t be fearful of failure because it is not a monster as we think it is. It’s just a training ground for those who are really striving for excellence in life. Euginia Herlihy

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• I constantly seek excellence in all domains that truly matter to me. Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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• I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. Oscar Wilde
• I am a man of simple tastes easily satisfied with the best. Winston Churchill
• Golfing excellence goes hand in hand with alcohol as many an Open and Amateur champion has shown. Henry Longhurst
• I may not be perfect but parts of me are excellent. Ashleigh Brilliant

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