He who knows even how to prepare a smoke properly, knows also how to meditate. And he who cannot cook well cannot be a perfect sannyasin. Unless cooking is performed with a pure mind and concentration, the food is not palatable.
When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.
The pursuit of perfection is frustrating and a waste of time, because nothing is ever perfect.
The pursuit of excellence is commendable and worthwhile. Therefore strive for excellence not perfection.
My father wasn't perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.
So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.
The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our living relationships. The novel can help us to live,as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture, anyhow. If the novelist keeps his thumb out of the pan.
Thus with most careful devotion Thus with precise attention To detail, interfering preparation Of that which is already prepared Men lighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding, Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation.
If the state cannot be entirely composed of good men, and yet each citizen is expected to do his own business well, and must therefore have virtue, still inasmuch as all the citizens cannot be alike, the virtue of the citizen and of the good man cannot coincide. All must have the virtue of the good citizen - thus, and thus only, can the state be perfect; but they will not have the virtue of a good man, unless we assume that in the good state all the citizens must be good.