To excel is to live. [ Beranger ]

Born to excel, and to command!
As by transcendent beauty to attract
All eyes, so by pre-eminence of soul
To rule all hearts. [ Congreve ]

Triflers not even in trifles can excel. [ Young ]

No crime is so great as daring to excel. [ Churchill ]

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly. [ Boileau ]

In conduct as in courage you excel.
Still first to act what you advise so well. [ Pope ]

Let those teach others who themselves excel;
And censure freely, who have written well. [ Alexander Pope ]

Who would ever care to do brave deed,
Or strive in virtue others to excel.
If none should yield him his deserved meed
Due praise, that is the spur of doing well?
For if good were not praised more than ill,
None would choose goodness of his own free will. [ Spenser ]

If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you. [ Colton ]

To govern men, you must either excel them in their accomplishments, or despise them. [ Beaconsfield ]

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well. [ John Sheffield ]

A man that is desirous to excel should endeavor it in those things that are in themselves most excellent. [ Epictetus ]

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel. [ Hazlitt ]

Want of courage upon some occasions assumes the appearance of ignorance, and betrays us when we most want to excel. [ Goldsmith ]

It is scarce possible at once to admire and excel an author, as water rises no higher than the reservoir it falls from. [ Bacon ]

Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel. [ Hume ]

Rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums, not in cures. [ Colton ]

Emulation is a handsome passion; it is enterprising, but just withal. It keeps a man within the terms of honor, and makes the contest for glory just and generous. He strives to excel, but it is by raising himself, not by depressing others. [ Jeremy Collier ]

The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images: we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately. [ La Bruyere ]

The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; the passions are powerful pleaders, and their very silence, like that of Garrick, goes directly to the soul, but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums, not in cures. [ Colton ]

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]