All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare, said a wise man. If so, what happens to excellence when we eliminate the difficulty and the rarity?

Perfection may be unattainable, but in our pursuit of it, we can grasp excellence.

Happiness comes from the full use of one's power to achieve excellence. Life is potentially an empty hole, and there are few more satisfying ways of filling it than achieving and exercising excellence. This principle of excellence is one which Americans seem to be losing, and at a time when the Nation stands in need of it. A lack of excellence implies mediocrity. And in a society that is willing to accept a standard of mediocrity, the opportunities for personal failure are boundless. Mediocrity can destroy us as surely as perils far more famous. It is important that we distinguish between what it means to fail at a task and what it means to be mediocre. There is all the difference in the world between the life lived with dignity and style which ends in failure, and one which achieves power and glory, yet is dull, unoriginal, unreflective, and mediocre. In a real sense, what matters is not so much whether we make a lot of money or hold a prestigious job; what matters is that we seek out others with knowledge and enthusiasm — that we become people who can enjoy our own company.

Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.

So how do we improve as a people? How do we strive for excellence when, as a matter of fact, people get celebrated for being wack, uninspiring and unexceptional? How do we deliver?

For all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Perfection is beyond our reach, but they who earnestly strive to become perfect, acquire excellences and virtues of which the multitude have no conception.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'.

If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?

Be extraordinary in your excellence, if you like, but be ordinary in your display of it.

I believe that perfection is not attainable, but by chasing perfection, we can reach excellence.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up. — - Vince Lombardi — —

There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.

Striving for excellence means never being satisfied—always doing things to keep improving, even if it means changing everything we do. It means we never feel that we have arrived. We don't believe our press clippings. We don't get complacent and pat ourselves on the backs. We talk about what we could have done better. We believe that we can achieve extraordinary results when we strive for excellence in all we do.