C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Imperfection
Where imperfection ceaseth, heaven begins.
Men are more unwilling to have their imperfections known than their crimes.
What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities!
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment Mercy.
The finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form.
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom—is a type of the life of this world.