No student ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him: it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required, that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction.
His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.
The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.
With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Those who are blessed with the most talent don't necessarily outperform everyone else. It's the people with follow-through who excel.
Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
