“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“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

“Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley

“Its hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.”
― Dolly Parton

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”
― Hunter S Thompson

“Focus on making yourself better, not on thinking that you are better.”
― Bohdi Sanders, The Secrets of Worldly Wisdom: Your Key to Unlocking Success

“If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?”
― John Wooden

“Do your best, and be a little better than you are.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley

“To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.”
― Michael Jordan

“Human tragedies:
We all want to be extraordinary
and we all just want to fit in.
Unfortunately, extraordinary people rarely fit in.”
― Sebastyne Young

“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.”
― Will Durant

“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

“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, Have Space Suit—Will Travel

“People of excellence go the extra mile to do what's right.”
― Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?”
― John Wooden

“Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)”
― voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

“To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“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, Killosophy

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”
― Booker T. Washington

“Those who mistrust their own abilities are being too wicked to themselves, discouraging themselves from doing what they should have been excelling in. If you are good at discouraging yourself, you can't be a good leader because leadership is built on inspiring others to face challenges.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Coach said. "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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence”
― Vince Lombardi

“In the land where excellence is commended, not envied, where weakness is aided, not mocked, there is no question as to how its inhabitants are all superhuman.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“To a hungry person, every bitter food is sweet. When the preferable is not available, the available becomes preferable!”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

“[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis - only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.
(pg. 44, "The Unsettling of America")”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“When you optimize your talents very well, you can pick money from people's pockets and nobody will ever get the guts to call you a thief.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“I will never accept life for what it is. I don't need an easy life. My road was meant to be hard because anything worth having in this world will take me to the very edge of myself. I will overcome everything I have ever gone through and will make my future the one God intended me to have. I will pick up the pieces of this pain and sculpt it into art. I am not ordinary and never was. I walk into my birthright as a queen with her head held high. I was born to do this!”
― Shannon L. Alder