The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
Shana Alexander
Categories: excellence

Excellent things are rare.
Plato Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: excellence

With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics
Categories: excellence

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.
Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics
Categories: excellence

Strive for excellence, not perfection.
H. Jackson Brown Jr. O Magazine, December 2003
Categories: excellence

In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.
Jane Austen Northanger Abbey, 1818
Categories: excellence

The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.
John F. Kennedy
Categories: excellence

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Pearl Buck The Joy of Children, 1964
Categories: excellence

It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.
Publilius Syrus Maxims
Categories: excellence

The renown which riches or beauty confer is fleeting and frail; mental excellence is a splendid and lasting possession.
Sallust The War with Catiline
Categories: excellence

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.
Sir Winston Churchill
Categories: excellence

What you build easily will fall quickly.
Slovenian proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: excellence effort

The within is ceaselessly becoming the without. From
James Allen First Things First: To Live, to
Categories: character actions excellence

You don't have to be the one who works the most hours, just the one who is most there during the hours you work. Come to work and put your heart on the table.
James Evans, CEO of Best Western "What have you done worthwhile today?" By Dale Dauten, Arizona Republic 10/30/2000.
Categories: excellence success achievement

An entrepreneur can become moderately successful doing the same thing that everyone else does. But if you want to be wildly successful, you have to do what no one else has done.
Tim Gill "Unit of 1," Fast Company, December 1999
Categories: success excellence creativity

Better to do a little well, then a great deal badly.
Socrates The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: quality priorities excellence

The most important part of being a leader is maintaining the desire to keep on learning. That means learning about yourself, about your peers, and about the people you serve.
Brian Koval "Shifting Gears," Fast Company magazine, September 1999
Categories: leadership excellence learning education

Good order is the foundation of all things.
Edmund Burke The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: excellence success achievement details

Progress comes from people who think against the grain. Without nonconformists, you don't advance.
Saw Ken Wye Fast Company, September 1999
Categories: change innovation excellence success

Character is the foundation to accomplishment--if you have diligence and determination, you'll succeed.
Beverly Chiodo "Character communication boosts success" by Dale Dauten
Categories: character success achievement excellence

You have to assume that you're in business for the long haul. That belief will drive you to build value.
Regis McKenna "Unit of One," Fast Company, January/February 2000.
Categories: excellence success service business

If you want to catch beasts you don't see everyday,

Dr. Seuss If I Ran the Zoo
Categories: excellence success work effort

The heart and soul that loves peace and wants others to be peaceful will never miss the mark of excellence.
Joyce Sequichie Hifler A Cherokee Feast of Days: Daily Meditations
Categories: peace relationships excellence love

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Quotations
Categories: work character integrity excellence

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doers of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again... who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the least knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations
Categories: criticism action courage excellence

Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you. Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Richard M. Nixon Power Quotes
Categories: excellence success attitude hate

You must first know what people need, and then invest yourself where you are most needed.
Russell H. Conwell Treasury of Inspiration
Categories: vision service success excellence

Excellence is more fun than mediocrity.
Leonard Berry 'Being extraordinary the way to succeed' by Dale Dauten. Published in the April 15, 1999 Arizona Republic
Categories: excellence success achievement leadership

God is in the details.
Mies van der Rohe The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: focus attention thoroughness excellence

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
Lord Chesterfield Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: effort excellence success integrity priorities

The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
Vince Lombardi Lessons from the Art of Juggling
Categories: excellence success commitment life joy happiness

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
William Hazlitt Categories: excellence goals vision conceit ego vanity

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.
Aristotle The Forbes Book of Business Quotations : 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: excellence habit education virtue action

Sanctity does not so much depend upon doing extraordinary actions, as upon doing our ordinary actions extraordinarily well.
Richard Challoner Cassell Companion to Quotations
Categories: character virtue excellence work routine

Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.
Frances E. Willard The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women
Categories: actions habits character success excellence

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most wanted to do.
W.H. Auden The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Quotations
Categories: genius excellence success vision creativity invention

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
Harriet Braiker Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: perfectionism motivation motivating excellence goals judgementalism

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
John Wooden Lessons from the Art of Juggling
Categories: learning personal growth mentoring stretching excellence

Ideas are hard chunks of reality waiting to be born. They have ingredients, names, purposes, and attendant tasks. They are the things we want to cultivate in the place of all those feelings that fill up our heads with abstract longing and dissatisfaction.
Carol Lloyd Creating a Life Worth Living
Categories: ideas emotions feelings dissatisfaction focus excellence

I know that many people feel that old age is a time to take it easy, but I compare my life now to being the last runner in a relay race. Would you have me slow down as I near the finish line?
Diogenes The Confidence Course: Seven Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: excellence leadership maturity aging purpose fulfillment meaning

Just as an appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration.
Igor Stravinsky The Vein of Gold : A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: work effort success excellence achievement goals mission

It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Franklin Seasons Planner, September 21, 1993
Categories: time excuses rationalization excellence performance work effort

The greats often became great because they continued to believe in themselves despite apparent failures.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: excellence success failure growth vision potential self-confidence

Make the second effort your second nature.
Harvey Mackay Harvey Mackay's 10/4/1998 column in the Arizona``Republic,
Categories: determination try persevere effort worth never give up never say die excellence leadership

The airplane stays up because it doesn't have the time to fall.
Orville Wright The Guinness Chronicle of the 20th-century in Quotations edited by David Milsted
Categories: focus time priorities work excellence drive purpose

How can we remember our ingnorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?
Henry David Thoreau The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: growth learning change listening education mentoring leadership excellence

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps 'til the legend, "over steep ways to the stars," fulfills self.
William C. Doane The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: adversity challenges difficulties problems attitude excellence success achievement

A common pitfall on the path of excellence is an overemphasis on comparing our progress with others. While competition can be a tremendous tool for stretching ourselves to new heights, too often it causes a lack of perspective. This loss of perspective can often be traced to the following cycle: losing becomes associated with failure, and failure with the loss of self-esteem.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: excellence growth learning competition comparisons stretching perspective failure self-esteem

Work and play are the same. When you're following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves.
Shakti Gawain The Vein of Gold : A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: work effort joy happiness success excellence achievement purpose meaning fulfillment

Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often granted upon easier terms.
Samuel Johnson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: focus excellence success vision mission priorities work talent skill

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 Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: excellence vocation opportunity mastery models inspiration guidance fulfillment vision potential

If you want to be creative in your company, your career, your life, all it takes is one easy step...the extra one. When you encounter a familiar plan, you just ask one question: "What ELSE could we do?"
Dale Dauten "Grimness shouldn't be part of creativity"``by Dale Dauten, published in the Arizona Republic Oct. 29, 1998.
Categories: creativity leadership excellence. go the extra mile initiative innovation business customer service

The great law of culture:
Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Thomas Carlyle The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: potential talents gifts skills ability capability cap strive striving success excellence

Forget the resolutions. Forget control and discipline...too much work. Instead try experimenting. Go in search of something to fall in love with...something about yourself, your career, your spouse.
Dale Dauten 'Charming the brain may allow changes' by Dale Dauten (Arizona Republic 1/7/99)
Categories: love joy attitude gratitude change growth self-improvement resolutions relationships success excellence

We are all capable of change and growth; we just need to know where to begin.
Blaine Lee The Power Principle: Influence with Honor
Categories: self-improvement change growth learning character guidance potential excellence mentoring coaching planning

There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.
David Starr Jordan The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: excellence leadership morality ethics true north principles character integrity honesty loyalty truthfulness

In the space age the most important space is between the ears.
Anne Armstrong The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Quotations
Categories: brain thought cognition planning vision foresight mind leadership excellence self-determination responsibility mission wisdom

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking Glass The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: effort work achievement goal dream stress life success excellence vision mission focus leadership progress

All of the most successful human beings I've know were inwardly at war with themselves. Their turmoil was at least as great as our own, and sometimes greater. What distinguished these leaders was not some inner peace but rather how they had learned to organize their lives around a noble ambition and to focus on it.
Walter Anderson The Confidence Course: Sevens Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: leadership excellence focus priorities balance peace purpose mission vision goal character meaning fulfillment service

We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.
Albert Einstein The Quotable Einstein
Categories: striving excellence high standards success achievement success try

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Words for All Occasions
Categories: work effort determination persevere vision success greatness goal achievement achievement excellence leadership ambition desire

...the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
Thomas Paine Power Quotes
Categories: difficulty difficulties obstacles challenges problems overcoming hardships struggle cost victory success achievement work effort action value leadership excellence pay the price goals

Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.
Colin Powell You Can Make It Happen
Categories: success work effort learning education wisdom failure mistakes loyalty persistence persevere excellence leadership relationships persist persevere determination

...leaders are people who are able to express themselves fully...they know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to fully deploy their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. They also know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others, in order to gain compensation and support. Finally, they know how to achieve their goals. The key to full self-expression is understanding one's self and the world, and the key to understanding is learning--from one's own life and experience.
Warren Bennis On Becoming a Leader
Categories: success achievement excellence leadership self-expression self-actualization self-awareness communication goals planning learning growth self-improvement authenticity self-awareness leading by example vision mission