Wordgrove Post & Review ~ 12.14.21

12/14/2021 by Dan Jack/BarTalk

THIS EDITION: perfect

Quoted In The Grove:

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
~Gustave Flaubert

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.
~John Drinkwater

If anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

EndQuote:
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
~John Ruskin

Exercise Prompt for 12/28: pleasure

~ ~

Editor’s Note:
To the friend who questioned the value of this labor of love that gives nothing back…these answers:

If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
~Aristotle

And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.
~John C Ransom

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This blog editor needs to pay his book editor. Please understand the need for this commercial break to your right. Conditions have changed.

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Change means that what was before wasn’t perfect. People want things to be better.
~Esther Dyson

Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.
~Owen Feltham

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.
~Shunryu Suzuki

To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
~John Henry Newman

Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
~Laurence Sterne

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.
~Emile Zola

If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life – that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment – that would be the perfect state.
~Cate Blanchett

I beat myself up every day, without so much as a scratch.
~Terri Guillemets (from: Perfectionism)

In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
~Hannah Arendt

There is no way to genuinely, powerfully, truly love yourself while crafting a mask of perfection.
~Vironika Tugaleva

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
~Anna Quindlen

It’s better to be perfectly useful than uselessly perfect.
~Dr Idel Dreimer

Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.
~Hugh Mackay

Life is not always perfect. Like a road, it has many bends, ups and down, but that’s its beauty.
~Amit Ray

Life’s not perfect. Some loose ends may never get trimmed up and tidied.
~Hoda Kotb

Life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.
~Alice Munro

But I am not perfect in my way of putting things
Because I lack the divine simplicity
Of being only what I appear to be.
~Fernando Pessoa

Life is too short to spend hoping that the perfectly arched eyebrow or hottest new lip shade will mask an ugly heart.
~Kevyn Aucoin

I’d rather live my life knowing that I’m not perfect than spend my whole life pretending to be.
~Will Smith

We have the freedom to live the good life if we choose to embrace grace, not perfection.
~Emily Ley

I haven’t lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that’s from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them.
~Kevin Costner

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. Nothing that lives is or can be rigidly perfect.
~John Ruskin

I’ve always looked for the perfect life to step into. I’ve taken all the paths to get where I wanted. But no matter where I go, I still come home me.
~Layne Staley

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.
~Gustav Mahler

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.
~John Ruskin

No person is completely wicked, just as no person is perfect. We are all grey.
~Sweety Shinde

We’re not perfect; we all have things that people might not like to see, and I like to show my faults.
~Grace Jones

There are a lot of things that are personally uncomfortable to show, especially me without makeup and completely bloated or crying. But I’ve realized that it’s time for me to show my audience that you don’t have to be perfect to achieve your dreams.
~Katy Perry

Every single one of us is loveable just the way we are; even with our flaws and blemishes. When we truly know that, we can stop disliking aspects of ourselves and embrace our imperfections. In fact, it is often because of these flaws that we are special and unique.
~Allen Klein

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectnesses. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
~Samuel McChord Crothers

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
~William Shakespeare

If you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection.
~Scott Berkun

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.
~George Will

A good garden may have some weeds.
~Proverb

I couldn’t ask for a perfect world, then I wouldn’t be allowed to exist.
~Jason Edward Shiffman

I love a Fool — as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him… And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition.
~Charles Lamb

To be perfect, one lacks only a defect.
~Karl Kraus

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in…
~Leonard Cohen

I love this world because it is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that’s why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead.
~Shree Rajneesh

If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.
~Beyonce Knowles

I don’t have to be perfect. All I have to do is show up and enjoy the messy, imperfect and beautiful journey of my life.
~Kerry Washington

We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks. That’s what connects us — that we’re all broken, all beautifully imperfect.
~Emilio Estevez

~ ~

Posted From The Grove

One of the basic laws of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist… Without imperfection, neither you or I would exist.
~Stephen Hawking

Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
~Edward de Bono

If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.
~Max Born

The goodness of a thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it serves. Now that use is either particular or universal.
~William Ames

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can’t eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as ‘progress’, doesn’t spread.
~Andy Rooney

Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.
~Albert Einstein

If, on occasion, the knowledge brought by science leads to an unhappy end, this is not to the discredit of science but is rather an indication of an imperfect ability to use wisely the gifts placed within our hands.
~Polykarp Kusch

Part of the problem is when we bring in a new technology we expect it to be perfect in a way that we don’t expect the world that we’re familiar with to be perfect.
~Esther Dyson

It is relatively easy to design for the perfect cases, when everything goes right, or when all the information required is available in proper format.
~Donald Norman

Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
~John Ruskin

Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you’ve only founded a superstition. If you test it, you’ve started a science.
~Hal Clement

Nothing that is complete breathes.
~Antonio Porchia

May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.
~Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

What I am is how I came out. No one’s perfect and you just have to accept your flaws and learn to love yourself.
~Kelly Brook

Perfectionism is adaptive if you are mindful of your humanhood.
~Asa Don Brown

No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
~William Hazlitt

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

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.
~Michael J Fox

To do better is better than to be perfect.
~Toba Beta

Perfection is the enemy of good.
~Gustave Flaubert

You’re not perfect! It’s ridiculous to want to be perfect anyway… Perfect is boring! So you’re not perfect! Wonderful! Have fun! Eat things that give you bad breath! Trip over your own shoelaces! Laugh!
~Stephen Mane

One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp.
~Ed Wood

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
~Honore de Balzac

Be intent upon the perfection of the present day.
~William Law

Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions.
~Mark Victor Hansen

…for nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it.
~John Henry Newman

If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.
~Maurice Chevalier

The perfect time to start something never arrives — START NOW!
~T Harv Eker

~Don’t Kick Me Out: Past Perfect (1:52) starring statues
https://vimeo.com/151770640

~Monty Python: I want to be a woman (1:43) Past? Tense. Future? Perfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-0iaC-1_Fo

~Amy Chang: Princess Perfect (2:03) animated, with a Disney twist
https://vimeo.com/557447667

~Giorgio Di Salvo: PERFECT WEIGHTS (12:00) precision machining, in grey tones, evolves, becomes strangely soothing
https://vimeo.com/22489316

Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity.
~Billie Jean King

Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.
~Ben Hogan

Baseball is a game of life. It’s not perfect, but it feels like it is.
~Joe Torre

You can’t hit a home run every time.
~C C Williams

Every time, all the time, I’m a perfectionist. I feel I should never lose.
~Chris Evert

When you aim for perfection, you discover it’s a moving target.
~Geoffrey Fisher

Even if you play perfectly, a fault of your opponent’s can destroy the entire beauty of the game.
~Vladimir Kramnik

Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence.
~Lewis H Lapham

I’m in the perfect position. It’s a sports position and a political position where I can help better the lives of athletes around the world.
~Angela Ruggiero

That perfect bliss and sole felicity, the sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
~Christopher Marlowe

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
~Martha Graham

Practice makes perfect, so practice to be perfect.
~Joseph Julius Bonkowski

But that the happiness of man may still remain imperfect, as wants in this place are easily supplied, new wants likewise are easily created.
~Samuel Johnson

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.
~J B Priestley

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.
~Patrick Henry

A perfect storm is in the making: financial uncertainty, economic downturn, government cuts, rising unemployment and a future that looks less clear the more we try to fathom it.
~Jonathan Sacks

§ VIDEO

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.
~Aldous Huxley

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
~Lewis Mumford

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
~Albert Camus

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
~Oscar Wilde

To an engineer, good enough is perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect.
~Alexander Calder

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
~Eugene Delacroix

I wanted nothing else than to make the object as perfect as possible.
~Erno Rubik

I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.
~Barbra Streisand

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
~Michaelangelo

I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.
~Albrecht Durer

Know that there is so much more to you than your body. It’s not just about perfecting the steps; you must trust your instincts to tell deep, emotional stories through the steps that you are performing.
~Karen Kain

Photography suits the temper of this age – of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.
~Edward Weston

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
~John Ruskin

I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.
~Maya Lin

What’s happened with computer technology is perfectly timed for someone with my set of skills. I tell stories with pictures. What I love about CGI is that if I can think it, it can be put on the screen.
~Frank Miller

Leon Theremin’s original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It’s like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level.
~Robert Moog

Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall.
~Jerry Saltz

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
~E M Forster

~Omeleto: The Perfect Gooseys (16:46) there is performance, then there is achievement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUgrVCDUCtE

Omeleto: The Other Morgan (14:04) her perfect life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dToWCRBMPg

~Dust: Deus Otiosus (The Idle God) (17:01) future perfect myth-born
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alMS8VfK1SY

Television’s perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don’t have to concentrate. You don’t have to react. You don’t have to remember. You don’t miss your brain because you don’t need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man’s nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn’t got the price of a television set.
~Raymond Thornton Chandler

The stories that I want to tell, especially as a director, don’t necessarily have a perfect ending because, the older you get, the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day; the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.
~Drew Barrymore

As a real person, he wouldn’t last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we’ve moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House’s friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don’t always like morally good people, do we?
~Hugh Laurie

Part of the beauty of the show in a way is that he’s not perfect, but you can always count on him to do the right thing in a pinch. That’s why he inspires people and inspires me.
~Stephen Collins

Actors who are lovers in real life are often incapable if playing the part of lovers to an audience. It is equally true that sympathy between actors who are not lovers may create a temporary emotion that is perfectly sincere.
~Ivor Novello

I’m always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.
~David Duchovny

I thought ‘The Artist’ was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don’t want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything.
~Michel Hazanavicius

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
~Alfred Hitchcock

I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.
~Alexander Hamilton

I’m like, bursting. I should be working. I don’t want to take a break. It’s funny, on set, I don’t have to go to the bathroom, I don’t have anything wrong, I’m perfectly fine, so through-and-through. I’m not hungry. I’m literally not even in my own body.
~Kristen Stewart

I’m not perfect, but I know when I start to do something, I don’t like to not finish.
~Bailey

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
~George S Patton

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
~Plato

I’m not perfect, but I think that I’ve done good to stay focused on what I’m called to do.
~Joel Osteen

It was perfect, but perfection is terrifying.
~Dominic Riccitello

Congratulations! You’re not perfect! It’s ridiculous to want to be perfect anyway. But then, everybody’s ridiculous sometimes, except perfect people.
~Stephen Manes

Perfect people are the scariest people to me.
~Leslie Mann

The only perfect people are those we do not know.
~Evan Esar

My perfect guy wears converse, is totally laid back, and doesn’t worry about being cool.
~Selena Gomez

I’m the most chill person I know…I’m happy with myself…I’m not perfect, but I’m cool with that.
~Freddie Prinze Jr (suicide)

Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren’t even mammals.
~Robert Anton Wilson

…confidence placed in another is dangerous if it is not perfect, for on almost all occasions we ought to tell everything or to conceal everything. We have already told too much of our secret, if one single circumstance is to be kept back.
~Jean de la Bruyère

I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.
~Anne Roiphe

Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship; it is always imperfect if either of these two are wanting.
~Eustace Budgell

Perfection is a mixed blessing: an imperfect friend is preferable to a perfect stranger.
~Evan Esar

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
~Gilbert K Chesterton

Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect, so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends – your own chosen family. There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.
~Jennifer Aniston

I’m not perfect, and I like everyone equally who is not perfect.
~Joseph Julius Bonkowski

Nobody’s perfect, and our fondest memories of anyone are of the amusing ways they proved it.
~Robert Brault

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§ MUSIC

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
~Henri Frederic Amiel

I see conflict. But the conflict is what makes it relatable. I’m conflicted; you’re conflicted. I’m not perfect — nobody is. I’m just blessed to be able to express my conflict through song.
~Kendrick Lamar

I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn’t expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration.
~Neil Diamond

As any artist can tell you, it is easier to reach perfection than to stop there.
~Robert Brault

The most difficult part of attaining perfection is finding something to do for an encore.
~author unknown

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
~Kurt Vonnegut

The most beautiful things are not perfect, they are special.
~Bob Marley

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
~John Ruskin

Judge not, before you judge yourself.
Judge not, if you’re not ready for judgment.
The road of life is rocky and you may stumble too,
So while you talk about me, someone else is judging you.
~Bob Marley

In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.
~Billy Corgan

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.
~Thomas Aquinas

It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
~Charles Baudelaire

Just because you’re beautiful and perfect, it’s made you conceited.
~William Goldman

I know who I am. I am not perfect. I’m not the most beautiful woman in the world. But I’m one of them.
~Mary J Blige

I may not be perfect but I am perfect enough to be a very good rendition of me.
~Jan Hellriegel

I don’t have perfect teeth, I’m not stick thin. I want to be the person who feels great in her body and can say that she loves it and doesn’t want to change anything.
~Emma Watson

It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your ‘portrayal’ of women. Even when I started out on ‘The Office’ eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it’s completely different.
~Mindy Kaling

Because I’m not perfect looking, I get to play better roles.
~Juliette Lewis

San Francisco is a mad city – inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.
~Rudyard Kipling

In LA, where I live, it’s all about perfectionism. Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.
~Alanis Morissette

When I joined Custer I donned the uniform of a soldier. It was a bit awkward at first but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men’s clothes.
~Calamity Jane

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
~Oscar Wilde

~Andres Gonzalez: Perfect (4:24) part dance, a poem, animated story, Sheerhan’s song softly in the background
https://vimeo.com/312852906

~Ally Brooke: Perfect (3:30) being allowed to be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKk5eDqZDKk

~One Direction: Perfect (3:48) the boys and a girlfriend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho32Oh6b4jc

~Simple Plan: Perfect (4:34) parents, disapproval, and perfection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUi54JTgL5s

-or-

Simple Plan: Perfectly Perfect (4:54) love in all its variety
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ajxH07b7w

~P!NK: Perfect (4:07) mature themes, because it’s good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3GkSo3ujSY

~Auburn: Perfect Two (3:55) like peanut butter and jelly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKM516jRXvQ

~Anne-Marie: Perfect To Me (5:37) anthem for being different, perfectly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FtFwAaCjrM

~Jonas Blue: Perfect Strangers (3:27) travelogue meet-cute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey_hgKCCYU4

~Palarios: Perfect Time (3:40) her hero
https://vimeo.com/99534251

~Moby: The Perfect Life • ft. Wayne Coyne (3:45) kaleidoscopic, a gathering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ZDqe5j4q8

~The Voice • Pitch Perfect 3: Freedom (2:48) glitzy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjlsmets–0

A woman’s life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man’s life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.
~Anthony Trollope

My whole working philosophy is that the only stable happiness for mankind is that it shall live married in blessed union to woman-kind – intimacy, physical and psychical between a man and his wife. I wish to add that my state of bliss is by no means perfect.
~David Herbert Lawrence

Marriage is wild. I thought it was this perfect land of happiness and joy. Wrong! After you say you do, you don’t for a long time.
~John Leguizamo

It’s all kind of a big illusion: the white picket fence and the perfect marriage and the kids. Check that box off, check that box off, and move forward.
~Sarah McLachlan

I will make mistakes, after all I am not perfect, but I will do my best to make them up to you. I would never hurt you intentionally. I would not give up on you, so I hope you don’t give up on me.
Sincerely,
The Person that Loves You.
~Carlos Salinas

My marriage? Up to now everything’s okay. But it’s a real marriage – imperfect and very difficult. It’s all about people evolving somewhat simultaneously through their lives. I think we’ve emotionally evolved.
~Jamie Lee Curtis

People are not perfect… very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they’ve had to work through them.
~Patricia Hewitt

My parents did not have a perfect marriage. It was pretty good, but it was not perfect. My marriage is not perfect. My wife is, but I happen to be imperfect. However, that does not discount the fact that the definition of marriage must be defended and protected.
~Stockwell Day

And my marriage was perfect when I wasn’t famous.
~Damon Wayans

There is no perfect marriage, for there are no perfect men.
~French saying

We’ll love you just the way you are if you’re perfect.
~Alanis Morissette

A marriage doesn’t have to be perfect, but you can be perfect for each other.
~Jessica Simpson

At the end of the day, you know, love does not happen between two perfect people as much as we would wish.
~Hillary Clinton

There is no perfect. There will always be struggle. You just need to choose who you wanna struggle with.
~Ronald Bass

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.
~Amos Bronson Alcott

Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers’ incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them?
~Anna Quindlen

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly – indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.
~Arianna Huffington

My father was always telling himself no one was perfect, not even my mother.
~Broderick Crawford

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.
~John Irving

Very often when you see families it’s all perfect and neat, and parenting isn’t like that. You do have constant negotiations. Things are ever developing and ever changing, and you constantly have to evaluate how you deal with your kids.
~Clive Owen

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
~William Hazlitt

Sex is… perfectly natural. It’s something that’s pleasurable. It’s enjoyable and it enhances a relationship. So why don’t we learn as much as we can about it and become comfortable with ourselves as sexual human beings because we are all sexual?
~Sue Johanson

I am imperfect and vulnerable but I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.
~Brené Brown

It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.
~Oscar Wilde

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
~Tom Robbins

Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.
~Ann Landers

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
~Thomas Merton

You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
~Sam Keen

She’s kind of a walking poem, she’s this perfect beauty…but at the same time very deep, very smart.
~Johnny Depp

I’m lucky in having found the perfect partner to spend my life with.
~Sara Paretsky

Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.
~Charlie Chaplin

Perfection is the greatest flirt of them all.
~Henry Stanley Haskins

Tired of trying to be perfect for you
I’m done jumping through hoops
There’s too much time I’ve wasted on chasing
And face it, I cannot be perfect for you
~Michael Jade

You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.
~Jodi Picoult

My kids will grow up in a house knowing that it’s perfectly normal for two men to be in love, it’s perfectly normal for two women to be in love. My kids will grow up knowing it’s all about love. It doesn’t matter who you’re with and everyone should have that experience.
~Tori Spelling

We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
~Cyril Connolly

~ ~

The ultimate, the perfect martini, a drink that’s dying of thirst.
~M*A*S*H

I’ve pretty much given up on the orange. I really have. I just don’t even bother. It’s just either sour, or woody, or the skin’s too thick. It’s very nice when you come across the perfect orange, because it’s really a beautiful experience. But the stakes are too high.
~Scott Thompson

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!
~Owens Lee Pomeroy

Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
~William Safire

Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.
~Frank Lloyd Wright

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.
~Evan Esar

I am Nobody, nobody is perfect, therefore I am perfect.
~Dandi Daley

School is practice for future life, practice makes perfect and nobody’s perfect, so why practice?
~Billie Joe Armstrong

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
~Somerset Maugham

In all this foolish world no creature is so perfect a fool as a woman ‒excepting always a man.
~Evan Esar

My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.
~David Mamet

The perfect date for me would be staying at home, making a big picnic in bed, eating Wotsits and cookies while watching cable TV.
~Kim Kardashian

And perfect happiness? Man, that’s a… the pool is about 92 degrees, the Jacuzzi is about 102 and an avocado farm.
~Jamie Foxx

My perfect day is constantly changing. Right now, it would be to lie around in a hammock reading with a portable phone and a table of food next to it. I would spend all day there. And that’s all that I can possibly come up with on the spur of the moment.
~Eric Stoltz

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
~Gilbert K Chesterton

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remainds perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.
~Terry Prachett

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
~Milton Friedman

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
~Thomas Carlyle

Talent Light
© Silvia Trujillo

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
~Walter Lippmann

Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can’t have perfection in a world of limited resources.
~Harry Browne

The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.
~Andrew Jackson

A monarchy conducted with infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence is the most perfect of all possible governments.
~Ezra Stiles

What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from.”
~Marilyn vos Savant

Because politics rests on an irreducible measure of coercion, it can never become a perfect realm of perfect love and justice.
~Christopher Lasch

There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
~Reinhold Niebuhr

Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn’t make every international problem a nail.
~Rachel Maddow

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
~Thomas Merton

A 527 [computer] doesn’t have a wife. It doesn’t have a brother-in-law who knows a lot about politics, or a union president who calls and doesn’t like the color of the suit, or bimbo eruptions. It’s the perfect candidate, because it has no personal characteristics.
~Roger Stone

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
~Gore Vidal

Your law may be perfect, your knowledge of human affairs may be such as to enable you to apply it with wisdom and skill, and yet without individual acquaintance with men, their haunts and habits, the pursuit of the profession becomes difficult, slow, and expensive.
~William Dunbar

Perfect solutions of our difficulties are not to be looked for in an imperfect world.
~Winston Churchill

Ultimately we may still ask, why can’t humans design a perfect society?
~Robert Shea

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
~Aldous Huxley

Although images of perfection in people’s personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies – utopian images – can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century.
~Dennis Prager

Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.
~Tacitus

If I don’t tell it all now, the story in the history books will always be imperfect and that would be wrong.
~Christine Keeler

I respect and empathize with reporters and editors who must compete in today’s environment. And I know full well that when I’ve been covering campaigns, which I still do, I’ve made my mistakes and have been far from perfect.
~Dan Rather

Watch the History Channel if you want it literal and historically perfect.
~Emily Blunt

Courage – a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
~William Tecumseh Sherman

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.
~Lao Tzu

~ ~

@Writers Platform

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited… We didn’t see many people. There were many books.
~Christopher Hitchens

I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.
~Louise Brown

I’m perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it’s all women. I always think it’s kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry.
~Diane Wakoski

In times when religious or political faith or hope predominates, the writer functions totally in unison with society, and expresses society’s feelings, beliefs, and hopes in perfect harmony.
~Juan Goytisolo

Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.
~George Bernard Shaw

Would you destroy something perfect in order to make it beautiful?
~Gerard Way

There is a danger of changing too much in the search for perfection.
~Agnetha Fatlskog

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.
~Karl Lagerfeld

I couldn’t be an ingenue today, because the business has changed. I remember when you could dress for a premiere just by putting on a cute top. Now you have to be perfect and fabulous in every way, or you’re ridiculed.
~Julia Roberts

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.
~Gertrude Jekyll

I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn’t. And that’s a tough place to be because you’re never satisfied.
~Robert Mapplethorpe

We also maintain – again with perfect truth – that mystery is more than half of beauty, the element of strangeness that stirs the senses through the imagination.
~Richard Le Gallienne

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
~P D James

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
~Toni Morrison

Nature is perfect.
~William Shatner

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.
~Jane Austen

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
~Jane Austen

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.
~Alice Walker

If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice it’s knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.
~Matthew Fox

I always find beauty in things that are odd and imperfect – they are much more interesting.
~Marc Jacobs

There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.
~Conrad Hall

I’m not perfect, but those flaws make an interesting person.
~Mary Frann

Flaws and imperfections are parts of the total desired look.
~David Wenger

If there’s any definition to being perfect, you’re perfect at being yourself.
~Zendaya

Imperfection means perfection hid.
~Robert Browning

~ ~

§ Glass Table @Wordgrove

~bckpakr: excerpt • Trip to Greece

Reality paid a visit and I was internally ‘losing it’! What had I done?!! Bought a one-way ticket to a land I don’t know, with a language I didn’t speak, whose customs I knew absolutely nothing about?

Anything could happen to me there, and my beloved Italy was getting further and further away from me with the chuggings of the ship’s engines, and all I could do was stare up into the blackness, hope that God could see me, and wonder what the next day would bring.

The next morning, I went out onto the deck of the ship to see where we were, and the bright morning sunlight struck my eyes so hard that I could hardly see at first.
But when my eyesight had adjusted, I saw the light glinting off the bluest water I had ever seen! It was surreal!

I don’t mean ordinary dark blue waters, no matter how magnificent they may look, but I mean these waters were of the kind of hue only associated with Greece where everyone thinks the pictures were made using camera filters.

Only now I realized this to be totally untrue!

The foamy of the waves caused by the ship looked so clean and glowing white, you felt like you could have eaten them, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the surrounding landscapes!

(to be cont.)

To suppose more than one supreme Source of infinite wisdom, power, and all perfections, is to assert that there is no supreme Being in existence.
~Adam Clarke

To the mind, God is a perfect criminal. He has done such a perfect crime by creating this world that mind cannot trace how He did it. That is why the mind always freaks out about God.
~Prem Rawat

Suppose that the creative suicide was forced to salvation by being made a god of his own becoming-universe, and suppose that over the ages our God is being made to evolve his own redemption.
~author unknown

The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.
~Emmet Fox

I make mistakes every day. I’m not perfect in my behavior, but I want to be and that’s what God is after, a heart that wants to be.
~Joyce Meyer

If God only used perfect people, nothing would get done. God will use anybody if you’re available.
~Rick Warren

To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
~Adam Smith

I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.
~Jesse Jackson

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.
~Thomas Aquinas

To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.
~Joseph Addison

Now an infinite happiness cannot be purchased by any price less than that which is infinite in value; and infinity of merit can only result from a nature that is infinitely divine or perfect.
~Adam Clarke

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
~Mahatma Gandhi

Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives.
~Jim Elliot

God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he’ll be there.
~Billy Graham

God is the perfect poet.
~Robert Browning

I understand that I’m not perfect. I made mistakes and I had a hand in everything that’s happened to me, good and bad.
~Dwyane Wade

Maybe you’re not perfect, but you’re willing to actually look at yourself and take some kind of accountability. That’s a change. It might not mean that you can turn everything around, but I think there’s something incredibly hopeful about that.
~Brie Larson

Warriors of light are not perfect. Their beauty lies in accepting this fact and still desiring to grow and to learn.
~Paulo Coelho

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
~Matthew Arnold

To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.
~Victor Hugo

We never taste happiness in perfection, our most fortunate successes are mixed with sadness.
~Pierre Corneille

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
~Franz Kafka

When you’re passionate about something, you want it to be all it can be. But in the endgame of life, I fundamentally believe the key to happiness is letting go of that idea of perfection.
~Debra Messing

And it would be perfect if you’d just get out of your own way and just let yourself be happy.
~Doris Hursley

Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.
~Kia Carrington-Russel

One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
~Chuck Palahniuk

At the core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.
~David Levithan

You can be perfect. Just choose when that is going to be and for how long then do it perfectly and get over it.
~Monica L Wofford

Prewritten Prompt: perfect

Nothing and no one is perfect. It just takes a good eye to find those hidden imperfections.
~Daphne Delacroix

Cause they will find every flaw
Even the ones you never saw
‘Cause when the spotlight’s where you live
Just know the cameras don’t forgive
You better be perfect
~Joshua Palispis Lazaro

When we see someone or something as imperfect, it is a reflection of our limitations, not theirs.
~Steve Maraboli

People who seek perfection rarely look in mirrors.
~Jason Edward Shiffman

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of others.
~Francois Fenelon

We can be aware of an imperfection without making any problem about it. In other words, the mind becomes an embracing mind.
~Josh Bartok

No one is perfect in this world. Forgive people for not knowing better and learn to move on.
~Leon Brown

I’m not perfect, but if there are any points given for caring about people with every fiber of your being and giving life all you’ve got every day, then I suppose I have a shot.
~Jack Welch

You are imperfect; permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.
~Amy Bloom

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
~William Shakespeare

If you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection.
~Scott Berkun

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.
~George Will

A good garden may have some weeds.
~Proverb

§ THE EXERCISE

All Kinds

The only lonely donkey
And the hugely ugly monkey
Met and got a room key
Ending up in pregnancy
Forced to wed, ignominy

Perfect scandal, feature tv
The young we wait for anxiously
Some with love, most curiously
Episodes we can’t wait to see
And pay to watch it, happily

sequel

insane maddening jest
coverage rated G thru X
perfect love’s definition
gallows humor in fruition
channel whY comes up next

autumn afternoon

deep fog down valley way
exhuberant blue skies here
high in the meadows
velvet green pastures
a single llama lopes along
briefly, stops to graze
chores done, the river waits
perfect day for a walk

The River Life

Days, like water
Coinage of the realm
Currents versus currencies
Change within banks
Shallows bend into pools
Ripple in slumber
Poverties of depth
Cascade and break
Broke, on the rocks
From trickling tears
To flood of years
From overjoyed
To overflowing
Gushing streams of time
Call it youth
Years of rushing
Gain and broaden
Meander~ sweeping ~ drifting
Reaching Delta, destination
Communion
Home, reunion
Common ocean
In spirit vapors
Rise again

5-7-5

perfect as it is
no corner on happiness
love gets in the way
‒
heaven-to-hell range
love’s the reason for rising
just perfect, as is
‒
love is as sunrise
perfect as the moon at night
mate to make up time

~ ~

The Olio:

Perfection is the child of time.
~Joseph Hall

Be intent upon the perfection of the present day.
~William Law

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.
~John Wayne

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.
~Josh Billings

If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.
~Michel de Montaigne

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death’s perfect punctuation mark is a smile.
~Julie Burchill

Pizza is not just a perfect blend of ingredients but of nostalgia, which can be the richest flavor of all.
~Mike Birbiglia

When I do a 30-minute meal, for instance, on Food Network, that’s my food you see at the end of the show and it’s not perfect. And if sometimes things break or drop or the pasta hits the wall when I’m draining it, they never stop tape. They just kind of let me go with it.
~Rachael Ray

Only the mediocre are always at their best.
~Jean Giraudoux

Most food you drop is still perfectly edible. If it was in your eyesight the whole time, you can pick it up and eat it.
~Mehmet Oz

I think every chef, not just in America, but across the world, has a double-edged sword – two jackets, one that’s driven, a self-confessed perfectionist, thoroughbred, hate incompetence — and switch off the stove, take off the jacket and become a family man.
~Gordon Ramsay (punctuation added for clarity)

I’m a four star general in this thing, and you don’t rise to the ranks of a four star general by hanging about the house being the perfect dad.
~Sam Elliott

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
~Edgar Allan Poe

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.
~John Stuart Mill

I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller.
~Michael Palin

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.
~Nikos Kazantzakis

Perfection is a road, not a destination. Every time I live, I get an education.
~Burk Hudson

Everything is perfect and there is always room for improvement.
~Shunryu Suzuki

It is foolish to reserve all our praise for perfection. That gives us an unpleasant impression, such as that which we receive from a person who, when there is a call for small change, produces a bank bill of a large denomination, which he knows no one can break for him.
~Samuel McChord Crothers

I think it’s perfectly just to refuse service to anyone based on behavior, but not based on race or religion.
~Dean Koontz

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
~Geroge Bernard Shaw

Look at our Lord’s disciples. One denied Him; one doubted Him; one betrayed Him. If our Lord couldn’t have perfection, how are you going to have it in city government?
~Richard J Daley

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
~George Eliot

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.
~Jane Porter

_____________

~ ~

The Salmugundi:

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