It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
Interpretation
Striving for perfection is a valuable pursuit, even if it remains unattainable.
This quote suggests that while perfection itself may be an unrealistic goal, having it as a guiding principle can motivate us to improve and advance in our lives. The acknowledgment that perfection is unattainable does not diminish its importance; instead, it highlights the journey of striving toward it as a valuable aspect of personal growth and development.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development, you can use this quote to encourage the audience to pursue their goals.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.
When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, this is certainly not like we thought it was.
As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient survives, you pray, because it's only by the grace of God that you get there.
Sometimes you learn more from losing than winning. Losing forces you to reexamine.
It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.
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