Thomas de Quincey Quotes

True perfection has to be imperfect. I know that sounds foolish, but it's true.

Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

Imperfection means perfection hid.

... one flaw throws the loveliness of [everything else] into focus. I remember reading that Shakers deliberately introduced a mistake into the things they made, to show that man shouldn't aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.

Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.

We attempted perfection; we wanted an object to be without flaw, so we cut the papers with a razor, pasted them down meticulously, but it buckled and was ruined... that is why we decided to tear prewrinkled paper, so that in the finished work of art imperfection would be an integral part, as if at birth death were built in.

To be perfect, one lacks only a defect.

Imperfections define perfection

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

There will never be any more perfection than there is now.

You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.

We are perfect in our imperfection.

If perfection is stagnation, then Heaven is a swamp.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

Imperfection is underrated. Perfection is overrated.

Your thorns are the best part of you.

We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.

We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, nor death, nor unhappiness, nor wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant. But if we think for a moment, we shall find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good without evil at the same time?

A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.

Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.

Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens to pass, but it is also true that every defect is allied to a perfection.

The egg is the symbol of perfection. Do you want an egg?