A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.
Mason Cooley

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.
Andre Malraux

Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.
Jonathan Edwards

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.
Jane Porter

I didn't know how well my first album had done; it was enough to get me to do the second album, which was a continuation of the music I'd worked on and perfected.
Roberta Flack

I have perfected the art of putting my feet on my husband's lap during awards ceremonies so he can rub them.
Annette Bening

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
Barack Obama

I learned to yodel pretty well. It took me a few months, but I eventually perfected it.
Johnny Weissmuller

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.
Henri Bergson

Nothing is invented and perfected at the same time.
John Ray

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.
Sam Abell

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
Francis Bacon

The ideal of a pure phenomenology will be perfected only by answering this question; pure phenomenology is to be separated sharply from psychology at large and, specifically, from the descriptive psychology of the phenomena of consciousness.
Edmund Husserl

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
Paul Theroux

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We waited until we perfected the dog food, and then we worked on the cat food. Even though it's not going through the roof the way the dog food is, I think it will catch on eventually.
Dick Van Patten

We're quite into graphics that are simultaneously two- and three-dimensional. But I can't really elaborate any further because it's not something - we haven't really perfected it.
Sean Booth

You have to make thousands and thousands of drawings before an illustration is perfected.
Richard MacDonald