Quotes about Perfectionism

his biggest problem was his need for a problem.

Perfectionists can rarely affirm themselves; therefore, it's very difficult for them to affirm others.

Unrealistic demands lead to undercurrents of failure.

Few things can mess you up as badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is so discouraging to give all you have trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling short, sabotaging your own efforts at every turn. Discouragement and shame settle in like a long Seattle rain. And this is what most Christians experience as the Christian life: Try harder; feel worse.

You clean and organize; you demand perfection—did you ever wonder why?

Perfectionism is the counterfeit of excellence. Excellence is Kingdom, while perfectionism is religion. What ever you do, do it with all you might, and as unto the Lord. That is excellence.

I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced had no existence.

Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn't make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn't produce morality; rather, it produces immorality.

Perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.

I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.'

Living with people at close range over many years, as both monastics and small-town people do, is much more difficult than wearing a hair shirt. More difficult, too, I would add, than holding to the pleasant but unrealistic ideal of human perfectibility that seems to permeate much New Age thinking.