QUOTATION: Perfection

This is our perfection: to find out our imperfections.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Perfection

We can never attain to perfection while we have an affection for any imperfection.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Jesus' Patience is the Glory of the Father

Our Lord never so much glorified His Father as in His failures among men, and by bearing with patience the imperfections, the coarseness, and the weakness of His Apostles; by His patience in awaiting the will and the hour of His Father in order to act; by His patience in succeeding only in the measure that His Father willed during His public life; and by His patience in His Passion, in which He consented to go through, what would naturally annihilate His work forever.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Sinners No Argument Against Christianity

It is no disgrace to Christianity, it is no disgrace to any great religion, that its counsels of perfection have not made every single person perfect. If after centuries a disparity is still found between its ideal and its followers, it only means that the religion still maintains the ideal, and the followers still need it.

--G.K. Chesterton in The Illustrated London News, March 2, 1929

QUOTATION: Imperfection

Despair at our imperfections is a greater obstacle than the imperfection itself

--François Fenelon

QUOTATION: Perfection

To attain perfection, we must endure our imperfection. I say: we must suffer it with patience, not love or cherish it; humility is fortified with suffering.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Imperfection

We say, "I have so many defects; I am so imperfect!" But how do we react if others say the same about us?

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: The Sins of the Saints

To every man, however holy he may be, there always remains some imperfection, because he has been drawn from nothingness: so that we do no injury to the saints when, in recounting their virtues, we relate their sins and defects; but, on the contrary, those who write their lives seem, for this reason, to do a great injury to making by concealing the sins and imperfections of the saints, under pretence of honouring them, not referring to the commencement of their lives, for fear of diminishing the esteem of their sanctity. Oh, no, indeed, this is not to act properly; but it is to wrong the saints and all posterity.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Perfection

He is not perfectly good who cannot be good among the wicked.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: The Perfect is the Enermy of the Good

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

--Bl. John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Virtue

When you see anyone who desires esteem and honors and avoids contempt, and who when contradicted or neglected, shows resentment and takes it ill, you may be sure that such a one, though he were to perform miracles, is very far from perfection, for all his virtue is without foundation.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Imperfection

You should never be displeased at the sight of your own imperfections, except with a displeasure humble, tranquil and peaceful, not excited and angry; for this latter kind does more harm than good.

--St. Francis de Sales