My name is `Abdu'l-Bahá [literally, Servant of Baha]. My qualification is `Abdu'l-Bahá. My reality is `Abdu'l-Bahá. My praise is `Abdu'l-Bahá. Thraldom to the Blessed Perfection [Bahá'u'lláh] is my glorious and refulgent diadem, and servitude to all the human race my perpetual religion... No name, no title, no mention, no commendation have I, nor will ever have, except `Abdu'l-Bahá. This is my longing. This is my greatest yearning. This is my eternal life. This is my everlasting glory.
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There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as Justice. Most of the other virtues are the virtues of created Beings, or accommodated to our nature as we are men. Justice is that which is practised by God himself, and to be practised in its perfection by none but him. Omniscience and Omnipotence are requisite for the full exertion of it. The one, to discover every degree of uprightness or iniquity in thoughts, words and actions. The other, to measure out and impart suitable rewards and punishments. As to be perfectly just is an attribute in the divine nature, to be so to the utmost of our abilities is the glory of a man. Such an one who has the publick administration in his hands, acts like the representative of his Maker, in recompencing the virtuous, and punishing the offender.
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Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.
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To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.
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Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.
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Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
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The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real.
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There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
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The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
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His Holiness rejoices to know that the object of your Society is in perfect accord with the doctrine which the Church has always taught and the Saints have always followed, leaving us innumerable beautiful examples of compassion and tenderness.The fact that the Nations have not always followed the precepts of the Church and the example of the Saints moves the Sovereign Pontiff all the more to favour all that tends (while reserving supreme honour to the King of Creation) to foster respect for these other creatures of God, which Providence forbids us to exploit without concern and enjoins us to show wisdom in our use of them …Therefore the August Pontiff trusts that you will find faithful and efficient fellow-workers in the priests of God, since it is their duty to conform to the teaching of the Church and the example of the Saints. It is for them nobly to train souls in sentiments of enlightened gentleness and fostering care and guidance, so that they may offer to the animals refuge from every suspicion of roughness, cruelty or barbarism, and lead men to understand from the beauty of creation something of the infinite perfection of the Creator.’
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Paradoxically, all these wonderful dimensions that we want for our being are completely missing, being a hope, a dream about the perfection of the being. Then this hope and dream of perfection is materialized in the vision we have on our soul mate. Moreover, if we are under the impression that we know what we would want as perfection, it always remains a mere false impression and nothing more, because then the event of a Great Love occurs, we realize that what we thought to be perfection is false, and the novelty of the new imagine on the perfection embodies by the lover makes us feel that intense feeling of suffocating love, precisely because we find our new standard for perfection, which becomes this way superior to the old one.
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Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.
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Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason's imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.
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It seems to me that perfection of means and confusion of goals seems to characterize our age.
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The very pink of perfection.
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Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
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As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.
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Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
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Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher.
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March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.
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The family must be democratized in that sense in which each individual within its bond shall be sustained in seeking and in maintaining the conditions of personality. No one human being to live solely for other's service..., but all to seek the utmost perfection of individual life as a contribution to the common life; this is the democratic ideal. There seems to be no other inherited institution in which this spiritual essence of democracy can be so clearly and so well realized as it may be and today often is in the private monogamic family.
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Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.
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When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.
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In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum.
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Some of us pursue perfection and virtue and if we're lucky we catch up to it, but happiness cannot be pursued. It either comes to you or it don't. You can always say if only this or only that, but IF ONLY is a state of mind that we get into when we feel deprived.
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Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.
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1 Corinthians 13:12:
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
(NIV)
For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim (blurred) reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God].
(AMP)
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
(KJV)
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Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
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It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
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