What is excellent is difficult.

What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again. [ Emerson ]

Don't cross the bridge till you come to it
Is a proverb old, and of excellent wit. [ Longfellow ]

Oh, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant. [ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure ]

This fellow must have a rare understanding;
For nature recompenseth the defects
Of one part with redundance in another;
Blind men have excellent memories, and the tongue
Thus indisposed, there's treasure in the intellect. [ Shirley ]

Men do nothing excellent but by imitation of nature. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

He's an excellent man that can wear poverty decently. [ Proverb ]

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. [ Aristotle ]

Barbarism is the non-appreciation of what is excellent. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Pastime passing excellent, if it be husbanded with modesty. [ William Shakespeare ]

Economy is an excellent lure to betray people into expense. [ Zimmermann ]

Philosophy, well understood, is an excellent road to heaven. [ Chastel ]

What is excellent cannot be fathomed, probe it as and where we will. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman. [ William Shakespeare ]

The world is an excellent judge in general, but a very bad one in particular. [ Lord Greville ]

Each excellent thing, once well learned, serves for a measure of all other knowledge. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

His hair is of a good color, an excellent color; your chestnut was ever the only color. [ William Shakespeare ]

Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty. [ Lowell ]

There is always some levity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise and also to stray. [ Joubert ]

Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good. [ Colton ]

An excellent scholar: One that hath a head fill'd with calves' brains without any sage in them. [ Webster ]

Taste can only be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good, but of the truly excellent. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. [ Samuel Smiles ]

The introduction of noble inventions seems to hold by far the most excellent place among human actions. [ Bacon ]

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

To one it is the mighty heavenly goddess; to another it is an excellent cow that furnishes him with milk. [ Schiller ]

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances. [ Hare ]

It is from our enemies chat we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes. [ Thomas Paine ]

Scruples, temptations, and fears, and cutting perplexities of heart, are frequently the lot of the most excellent persons. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

The little and short sayings of nice and excellent men are of great value, like the dust of gold, or the least sparks of diamonds. [ Tillotson ]

A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors. [ Ouida ]

There are principles excellent for certain firm and energetic characters, which would be worth nothing for those of an inferior order. [ Chamfort ]

Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound: both excellent sauce, but they have lived and died poor, that made them their meat. [ Fuller ]

Artists may produce excellent designs, but they will avail little, unless the taste of the public is sufficiently cultivated to appreciate them. [ George C. Mason ]

An honorable name or a good reputation is an excellent protection against wrong-doing: we fear to compromise it more through vanity than virtue.

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. [ Lamb ]

There never did and never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in a character which was a stranger to the exercise of resolute self-denial. [ Scott ]

Mothers! endeavor to educate your daughters; tram them up to be faithful, grateful, dutiful daughters, and they will not fail to be excellent wives and mothers. [ Mrs. A. G. Whittelsey ]

Man is, beyond dispute, the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is a dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man. [ Saadi ]

Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means. [ Ben Jonson ]

The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who desire to be admired for that which only deserves admiration. [ Addison ]

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one. [ Goldsmith ]

It is admirably remarked, by a most excellent writer, that zeal can no more hurry a man to act in direct opposition to itself than a rapid stream can carry a boat against its own current. [ Fielding ]

Diligence is the mistress of learning, without which nothing can either be spoken or done in this life with commendation, and without which it is altogether impossible to prove learned, much less excellent in any science. [ Madeleine Guerchois ]

How would that excellent mystery, wedded life, irradiate the world with its blessed influences, were the generous impulses and sentiments of courtship but perpetuated in all their exuberant fullness during the sequel of marriage! [ Frederic Saunders ]

We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline dove's-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which have all this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Thinkers who trace systems of philosophy are merely impelled by an innate instinct; they know that their precepts, however excellent, are not suitable to the majority: the wisdom may be admired by many, but few will follow the principles. [ De Finod ]

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else. [ Ruskin ]

The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result, [ John Mason Good ]

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and laborious attentions to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man, who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him that he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still. [ Chesterfield ]

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]

Whatever we may say against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem, to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations." [ Goethe ]